Travelogue: Calcutta
Caclutta was a sight for sore eyes this morning. I arrived at the Howrah station and was relieved not see the cement floors covered with sleeping families and roaming cattle. The cabs waiting outside were all the same charming 1950’s British style. I happily hailed one down and it spirited me across the Hoogley River to Calcutta proper and to Sudder street where Wikitravel had indicated most backpackers stay.
* * *
It was it a scene out of a horror movie… except it was broad daylight and there were happy Birkenstock-wearing travelers lingering in front of the Salvation Army hostel. I took one look at the dilapidated, rank-smelling hovels and understood very well the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. I turned right around and paid the exorbitant sum of $50 US a night for a slightly more pleasant hotel up the street that stinks of paint thinner. I’ve come a long way from the $10 a night guesthouses of Kathmandu.
Over my lunch of mango juice and dry toast (I still haven’t been able to swallow since my esophagal accident), I contemplate the fact that no other backpackers or fellow foreigners have even so much as said hello throughout these entire two weeks. I consider this because there are a great number of Spanish-speaking tourists in this hotel. There have been few Americans in either Nepal or India and the Europeans tend to avoid eye-contact as though I'm going to bet for money. Ironically, I’m reading Vonnegut’s “Man Without a Country” and that is indeed what I feel like, stripped of nationality. I can’t even claim to be Mexican as no one has even heard of it.
“Where are you from?”
“I’m American.”
“No. You do not look American.”
Frustrating. At least one Nepali man tried to be helpful by asking if I was a Hawaiian kind of American.
* * *
It was it a scene out of a horror movie… except it was broad daylight and there were happy Birkenstock-wearing travelers lingering in front of the Salvation Army hostel. I took one look at the dilapidated, rank-smelling hovels and understood very well the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. I turned right around and paid the exorbitant sum of $50 US a night for a slightly more pleasant hotel up the street that stinks of paint thinner. I’ve come a long way from the $10 a night guesthouses of Kathmandu.
Over my lunch of mango juice and dry toast (I still haven’t been able to swallow since my esophagal accident), I contemplate the fact that no other backpackers or fellow foreigners have even so much as said hello throughout these entire two weeks. I consider this because there are a great number of Spanish-speaking tourists in this hotel. There have been few Americans in either Nepal or India and the Europeans tend to avoid eye-contact as though I'm going to bet for money. Ironically, I’m reading Vonnegut’s “Man Without a Country” and that is indeed what I feel like, stripped of nationality. I can’t even claim to be Mexican as no one has even heard of it.
“Where are you from?”
“I’m American.”
“No. You do not look American.”
Frustrating. At least one Nepali man tried to be helpful by asking if I was a Hawaiian kind of American.
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