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Well... Where do we start! Once again our flight was delayed, we set off from KL due to depart at 2.30 with an arrival in Kolkata at 3:50pm with time to get to our train to Varanasi.
As a side, we were originally going to spend two nights in Kolkata staying in a guest house called the Bodhi Tree Hotel. But with the delayed start to our trip, our connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur was missed and the only other flight was on the Thursday. We had to catch the connecting flight the same day as the train to Varanasi.
So once again our flight was delayed. We had to get off the plane in KL and board a new one due to technical difficulties. Our flight got us into Kolkata airport at 6.45pm.
We thought it would be a struggle but we high tailed it out of there and into the most incredible taxi ride of our lives. We had four taxis between us, and it seemed to be just like the amazing race! We had just under an hour to get to the station and the taxi driver master was telling us that peek hour traffic would take us two hours to get to the other side of town. Jamie gave us all 50 rupees and we told the drivers they could have it if they got us there in time for our train at 8 pm.
They tried... It was amazing we encountered beggars five lane roads and the most amount of honking cars you have ever seen. It was an eye opening experience and our first smell of India! We all got to the train depot after eight to find that we has missed the train!
Jamie and Judy went off to find out about the next train and Bill and the rest of us took in our surroundings. It was like nothing we have ever seen before. There were so many people.. They were sleeping on the floor and in he streets and the atmosphere was so thick with dust and pollution that at first we found it hard to breathe. Some of us were more than a little frightened but we rallied together and helped eachother.
The next train was a long wait off so Jamie managed to bribe a train manager to let us wait in the first class waiting hall. This is where we stayed and waited for the train. We were separated by gender and the girls definitely got the better deal -there were only about five other women in our room and the boys had about thirty men in there's.
None of us slept well while we waited for our train. It was our first experience of squat toilets and it cost 1 rupee to use the facilities. When we left the waiting hall a lady demanded 2rupee each to clean up after us.
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