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KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA. WEDNESDAY APRIL 28 2010, 2130 HRS.
After ten hours in a train, three hours on an airplane, and after walking six hours in the scorching sun, I find myself from a Buddhist temple at the heart of the city of 16 million people, the city of Kolkata.
Namaste,
I had some pressuring moments in the Kolkata airport this morning: The officials said they will not let me arrive to India because I haven't informed them where I will stay, and because I don't have a plane ticket to prove that I'm leaving India inside 30 days. An hour later, after many questions and after a lot of explaining, I got the 30-day visa by making up a story that I don't have a ticket because I will go to Kathmandu from India by walking... "well if you wanna believe that story, you can."
There's only one word to describe a first day alone in Kolkata: Overwhelming. An insane amount of people everywhere, a temperature so high I don't even want to know how many degrees, an unbelievable, death-defying traffic chaos, people making a lot of noise, no cold beer anywhere... I haven't seen any Westerners here, and Indian people say it's because the weather is simply too hot. They're also wondering what the hell am I doing here at this time of the year. Everywhere people stare at me a lot, and with all my equipment I draw much more attention than I'd want to. I gathered some especially interesting looks at certain narrow streets which were obviously some kind of Muslim area.
At the end of the day, nearly collapsing from dehydration, exhaustion and the pressuring swarm of people and noise everywhere, I found a Buddhist temple where I can spend this night, as a pilgrim of some sort. Now I can finally take off all my heavy back-packs and gear from my sweating shoulders, and from here I'll slowly start advancing towards the Kalighat temple… I have no idea what will happen tomorrow, all I know is that I could sell my soul for one cold beer right now.
PS. Luckily I can comfort myself with some of that Vietnamese cobra moonshine I brought with me… "Why is the rum always gone?"
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