17/jan alipur & sad tigers
The korean girls were leaving the 19th, and we didn't really know when was our time to leave kolkata. So, as we had seen quite many areas, met a few people, visited temples, went out, and smell a part of india... we decided to leave the same day.
We bought 2 tickets to balisore, 240 km from kolkata, south. We still wanna try to surround india, with some incursions to the interior. Kolkata – balisore : 134 rupees, in second class. I think it was the cheapest one, because the next one was more than RS 500.
My stomach seems to be better, and I wasn’t feeling weak at all, so we decided to go to alipure, south of Kolkata, and where the wealthy people live. It’s hard to imagine a middle class in India. In my head I only have images from slums, or sultans, nothing in between. Fortunately is not reality. We first went to the zoo, RS10, and with quite many animals, leaving in very bad conditions, and with very little space. Some of them looked just like crazy, repeating the same movement all the time. They have a white tiger, a few Indian elephants, rhinoceros… and everything was very, very dirty. They were also burning rubbish next to the animal’s cages. And it’s hard to understand why everything is that dirty, because you see Indians cleaning themselves all the time. But on the other hands it’s impossible to find a trashbin, not even in the center. They have menaged to avoid serving food in plastic plates, using leafs plates. And instead of plastic glasses for the chai, the national drink, tea with milk and a lot of suger, they use clay glasses (fang).
After that, we walked through alipur, that didn’t really looked like a rich neighbourhood, to the subway station, to go back home. There was nothing separing the wealthy area from the very pour area and slums. Everything seems to be mixed in india. Thousands of different gods, people from different areas, dishes with many different spices, animals, cars, colors… but everything seems to cohabit peacefully, respecting the others.
In the evening we met uki, that the right spelling is ok, and her friend rufina, that is written lufina. So we had dinner with ok and lufina in khalsa. My favourite place in the area, owned by a sikh man. Sikh is a religion, where men were a turban, and a very long and populated beard. He seems a very clever man. Hard to tell why.
I’m eating a lot of vegetables here, veg’s, they are really good, but fatty and oily. Curry, or masala, seems to be the base for every dish, with a lot of spices, with the result of a very tasty food. But sometimes it’s hard to say what are you really eating.
Ok and Lufina invited us for dinner the day after. A kind of good bye party with many other koreans and japanese, in the terrace of paragon guest house, a very lively place, where I’ll go if I come back to kolkata.
The best part of this trip, among many things, is that without planning a single thing, every day turns to be special and different form the previous one. It can be because you meet someone that turns to be someone important for you in that moment, for a new atmosphere, or just a moment. For something you see, or feel. For the music you hear, for the colors and smiles… I think that it will be very hard to get tired about this way of living, if we can call it that way. Only health and money can stop this everyday dream. Let’s see!!!
And I wanna thank you all again to keep on writing here and in spray.se!!
Bernard, anna, mare, eli, quim, ribas, afrika, alberto, miquel, caroline, christine, daniela, johan, thea, eloi, karina, valia, kosal, nikki, may, marta, paolo, alice, ferran, albert, noemi, marisol, vered and I hope I don’t forget anyone!!!
25/1/05
We bought 2 tickets to balisore, 240 km from kolkata, south. We still wanna try to surround india, with some incursions to the interior. Kolkata – balisore : 134 rupees, in second class. I think it was the cheapest one, because the next one was more than RS 500.
My stomach seems to be better, and I wasn’t feeling weak at all, so we decided to go to alipure, south of Kolkata, and where the wealthy people live. It’s hard to imagine a middle class in India. In my head I only have images from slums, or sultans, nothing in between. Fortunately is not reality. We first went to the zoo, RS10, and with quite many animals, leaving in very bad conditions, and with very little space. Some of them looked just like crazy, repeating the same movement all the time. They have a white tiger, a few Indian elephants, rhinoceros… and everything was very, very dirty. They were also burning rubbish next to the animal’s cages. And it’s hard to understand why everything is that dirty, because you see Indians cleaning themselves all the time. But on the other hands it’s impossible to find a trashbin, not even in the center. They have menaged to avoid serving food in plastic plates, using leafs plates. And instead of plastic glasses for the chai, the national drink, tea with milk and a lot of suger, they use clay glasses (fang).
After that, we walked through alipur, that didn’t really looked like a rich neighbourhood, to the subway station, to go back home. There was nothing separing the wealthy area from the very pour area and slums. Everything seems to be mixed in india. Thousands of different gods, people from different areas, dishes with many different spices, animals, cars, colors… but everything seems to cohabit peacefully, respecting the others.
In the evening we met uki, that the right spelling is ok, and her friend rufina, that is written lufina. So we had dinner with ok and lufina in khalsa. My favourite place in the area, owned by a sikh man. Sikh is a religion, where men were a turban, and a very long and populated beard. He seems a very clever man. Hard to tell why.
I’m eating a lot of vegetables here, veg’s, they are really good, but fatty and oily. Curry, or masala, seems to be the base for every dish, with a lot of spices, with the result of a very tasty food. But sometimes it’s hard to say what are you really eating.
Ok and Lufina invited us for dinner the day after. A kind of good bye party with many other koreans and japanese, in the terrace of paragon guest house, a very lively place, where I’ll go if I come back to kolkata.
The best part of this trip, among many things, is that without planning a single thing, every day turns to be special and different form the previous one. It can be because you meet someone that turns to be someone important for you in that moment, for a new atmosphere, or just a moment. For something you see, or feel. For the music you hear, for the colors and smiles… I think that it will be very hard to get tired about this way of living, if we can call it that way. Only health and money can stop this everyday dream. Let’s see!!!
And I wanna thank you all again to keep on writing here and in spray.se!!
Bernard, anna, mare, eli, quim, ribas, afrika, alberto, miquel, caroline, christine, daniela, johan, thea, eloi, karina, valia, kosal, nikki, may, marta, paolo, alice, ferran, albert, noemi, marisol, vered and I hope I don’t forget anyone!!!
25/1/05
posted by Unknown at 13:01
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home