5 days Railroading North India: From the Calcutta gutter to IT Gurugram.

Writing on the road.

We had quite a hard landing after the ease of travelling in Thailand. I knew the Indian ‘hustle and bustle’ would be a shock to my system; Thais don’t have an overwhelming need to sound their horn all the time when driving, so you're not under constant sonic attack on the streets. Knowing this though didn't make it easier.

I’ve backpacked extensively in India before the dawn of smart phones, but it seems the more dependent we get the harder it is when they don’t work. The old systems that travelers used to use like word of mouth and carrying the Lonely Planet, have given way to instant online bookings, google maps and e-taxi services.

_{Street Kid Pahar Ganj, Delhi.}

We landed in Calcutta after midnight. I could neither withdraw cash nor find a sim card at the Airport, so I changed a few dollars I had and booked the closest OYO Rooms using the airport wifi. There was an Uber kiosk where a sleeping guy woke up and ordered us a cab. We set off, we'd work out our other issues in the morning. Although the room wasn’t the greatest, it was much better than sleeping in the airport "lounge" and next morning we set off in an Uber pool for a Booking.com somewhere more central.

_{Crossing the street in Calcutta}

Central calcutta is still the 3rd world. It’s total chaos and being there took me back to my early visits to India almost 20 years ago. They still have Man drawn rickshaws and the yellow cabs are Ambassadors; the once British car sold off to India and iconic across the subcontinent until the country began to produce its own modern vehicles. The Uber dropped us and we managed to find the building our guest house was supposed to be in, but at the 'A.V. Complex Railway Building' noone had ever heard of ‘Prity Guesthouse’.

Not having connection was clearly a problem and I was very glad we hadn’t arrived here in the middle of the night. Finding a local sim card became top priority. We traipsed around in the noise and dirt bearing backpacks and cases, sometimes stepping over dying people and sleeping dogs. Cows sit watching the traffic chewing god knows what, while trucks belch black clouds and auto rickshaws scream their horns as they jostle for position around us. Somehow though, at least for the first couple of hours, despite the intense heat, smoke, dirt and noise, I still loved it. In the day to today experiences of my modern life there is nothing to compare to the sights and smells of this urban human jungle.

_{Bought a bag in Thailand. The zip broke and I consider throwing it but glad I didn't as this guys fixed it in no time}

Here there and everywhere, every kind of economic activity imaginable is taking place all around you. Hawkers selling everything from tender coconuts to obscure items that look like they've been picked from the trash. Everyone here has found an economic niche in the ecosystem. For some it was barely possible to imagine they could make enough living to survive. For some it's a matter of holding on a little longer to life. Many, like the bag fixers and kids with piles of broken mobile phones and soldering irons, were once common sights in every indian city but have now largely disappeared from the more modern parts of the country. Some only left questions, does the guy who sits all day with bathroom weigh scales really make a living simply providing a weighing service?

If you can make $1 a day doing anything, then there’s someone doing it in Kolkata because there is always someone whose alternative is death.

_{A girl in a Bazaar}
On a street corner a pipe jets out a stream of clean looking water and people bath beneath, women careful to preserve their dignity. The cooling water looks quite pleasant but you realise this street is their bathroom. These bathers may have their own shack to sleep in, but those sleeping on the the hard street clearly do not. A woman perhaps in her early 50s lies by the roadside, no one takes notice, she looks uncomfortable, something in her face tells me she’s exhausted. I know nothing, but as I walk by I can imagine she hasn’t long to live.

In a crowded bustling bazaar, the human traffic flows between shops fronts and temporary hawkers lining the roadside. Here I pass a venerable old woman in an orange Sari, thin, silver haired, she walks incredibly slowly yet with immense dignity with a tripod walking stick. She’s almost blind. My heart leaps as I pass, feeling she would not be here but for necessity. I wonder whether I could put some money in her hand, but the flow of people carries me on, you can’t help everyone and I have my own needs. I have my baggage to navigate through the crowd and an eye to keep on Aglae who’s following and experiencing India for the first time.

_{In the Lal Bazaar area of Calcutta it was hard to find somewhere to eat. However Plywood shops were plentiful.}

Ultimately the day turned into a minor ordeal. The vodafone shop didn’t exist at its location on google maps, the ministore couldn’t give a sim to foreigners. When, after a few hours, we finally found the cool AC relief of the mainstore in Girish Park we were told that to get a sim we first had to be checked into a hotel. More traipsing, finally a retired gentlemen took time to guide us to the Hotel Himalaya, it was grubby, quite expensive ($30) and run down like everything in surrounding Lal Bazaar district.

We got there in the end, and now I have a 4G sim that gives me 1.4GBs per day and costs about $9 for 83 days of service. More than enough for both our internet needs for the trip.

After all the walking around in the fumes we were tired and realised we hadn’t eaten all day. We got some food. It tasted great, but next morning we were both throwing up with pounding headaches. ‘Welcome to India’.

_{Visiting a slum with Rachel}

Suddenly the heat, dirt and worst of all the noise, were all too much. I almost cancelled visiting Calcutta Rescue next day, and even gave thought to flying to Delhi and heading straight for the mountains. One thing every individual amongst 1.5 Billion Indians quickly learns is that in public life there is a simple choice, fight for you own interests no matter what or be trampled on. This translates into many particularly Indian phenomenon, some highly comical, but in the case of road traffic the use of ‘horn’ means “I’m coming through” and the ingrained habit to put oneself first means you can see the most ridiculously unnecessary road maneuver almost all the time while watching traffic. If you're not used to this it can be hell. ‘Get me out of here!’, I scream internally, but 24 hours later I’m well again and glad to be sticking to the plan.

There'll be video on youtube soon from the next few days for now I want to bring this blog up to the present, so here an overview of the next few days.

_{School opening, Bodhgaya}

My friend Rachel works at Calcutta Rescue and we spent a day filming at one of their clinics and the slums where their patients live. Then overnight to Bodhgaya, again arriving just after 5am. We filmed the opening of a school for Dalit children, visited the Mahabodhi and hopped back on the train again at 1am. Next day 5am we were in Varanasi, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world,’ Hhere we found peace and good nights sleep in the beautiful Singh guest house at Shivaya Ghat ( $4). We took a boat on the Ganga, saw the Ghats but the priority was filming a renovation project very aligned with Astralship called Ganges Nirvana.

One last overnight train got us to Delhi. Here we met up our genius tech Astral Pirate Rishabh. Now we are 3.

We took breakfast in Pahar Ganj to wait out the rush-hour and then hopped on the metro to Gurgaon (or Gurugram as it’s recently had its old name restored). Gurgaon is IT outsourcing central. It’s a modern, fairly soulless layout where IT workers go from tower block homes to AC offices for long hours and serve the Western economies.

The afternoon passed quickly and we were soon catching the metro back north again to Delhi. The train starts empty at Huda City and we were in the front row as the doors opened, but if musical chairs ever makes it to the Olympics then these guys have it covered. In a second every seat is taken, the sitters all wearing a smirk. Aglae and I are left without a seat, we comment out loud it’s just like musical chairs and now most of the carriage is laughing with us.

At Majnu Kha Tilla new Tibetan Colony we find our bus to Dharamsala. 10hrs drive later and finally I’ve arrived where the air is clean, there is no road nearby, and we have a beautiful room with a view and time to catch up on writing and work. Astralship office is open in Dharamkot for the next few days.

Thanks for reading all this way! With my last post I included Episode 1 of our video Docs. It's back story now, but I’ll keep posting an episode with each post. Here is Episode 2 from when we arrived in Bangkok over a month ago:

_{I'm still getting up to Steem. It's quite a learning curve. Last time I experimented with a couple of resteem bots. Is there a better way? I've just seen something called @curie that looks interesting. Any comments on this and especially resteems very gratefully received.}