Kolkata part 2 – A delayed start

Day 1 night…

We crossed a mall, the Quest Mall, on the way, but that was also closed as expected since it was midnight – the building had a unique design, and Aaron, who was interested in photography, immediately started clicking snaps from different viewpoints. On the other side of the road, we spotted two restaurants – as per reviews, the 2nd one was supposed to be better, but as we walked past the first one, we had a couple of guys at the door trying to direct us into their restaurant. We ignored their words and dodged past them, and we were thankful that there were cops a few metres ahead of us.

The restaurant was large, with a couple of floors, and we were surprised to see families with small kids dining at this hour. This was probably because of the festival season.
We ordered rotis and a non-veg gravy; the roti here was slightly different – bigger but soft. Looking around at the other tables, seemed like this place was popular for their biryanis.

We picked up a few toiletries from a shop on our return to the hotel. We also had tea from a tea stall that was serving it in small matkas (clay cups); they had 2 sizes, and the small one was really tiny! The matkas are disposable, and since they were biodegradable, I guess no one bothered about all the broken matkas in front of the stall.

Our hotel was opposite a park which, as per the map, was called the ‘Park Circus Maidan’. Something to check out in the daytime.

My friend, Deb (a native of Kolkata), had messaged a lengthy day 2 timetable for us. It was 2 am when we hit bed; and I slept like a log.

Day 2 – Friday (Sasthi)

We woke up at 8 am. As per Deb’s plan, we were supposed to be at our first destination at 6:30! We had a quick breakfast at our hotel. This was a budget hotel, so not the place where you expect to see a plethora of options – there were parathas, cornflakes and eggs. Was sufficient for us to start the day.

As per the plan, the second spot for the day was the park near the hotel – so we decided to start there. Deb said there would be a puja (prayer session) in the Circus Maidan park. The first thing we saw when stepping inside was the pandal within a large tent – decoration work was still underway. There was a priest around, but we’d likely missed the puja or maybe it was happening later in the day. Deb said that usually in the pandals, there is a puja in the morning and aarti (a ceremony with lamps) in the evening. Didn’t seem like anything else was happening in the park in the morning and so we headed to our next spot which wasn’t a part of Deb’s list.

A sweet start

Kolkata is known for its sweets, so we wanted to hit a sweet shop in the morning; we found one on Google with decent reviews and within walking distance. The shop was named ‘Mithai’ (which in Hindi means sweets!), and we again passed by the Quest Mall on the way. We indulged in some rasgullas (you have different variations of the rasgulla) – soft that you could cut through it with a spoon, unlike the ones we tend to find in South India, where it generally tends to be spongy and rubbery. We also had the sandesh (or Shondesh) – this is a milk-based sweet, but it is pretty dry compared to the rasgulla, which is juicy because of the syrup it is soaked in. There are flavoured ones as well like chocolate, mango etc. This was my first time tasting the sandesh, and I didn’t like the taste as much. Rasmalai is one of my favourite sweets (again a milk-based sweet which is served with the milk), and we had a piece of that as well – we also noticed that there was a sweet that was being made while we were there in the shop and in large quantities – the mishti doi – it’s like a version of sweet curd. Definitely worth trying out the sweets to find which ones you like – there’s also a lot of difference you’ll notice between sweet shops. While I didn’t enjoy the sandesh from this shop, I did like the sandesh in another shop that we visited later in our trip.

After having all those sweets, we definitely weren’t up for walking any further! Deb’s timetable told us to take an Uber or Ola. The Mithai shop was on the corner of the main road; we went to the other side and hoped to flag down an auto-rickshaw (we call it an ‘auto’ – a motorized 3-wheeler) – it’s an interesting experience to travel using multiple modes of transportation in a new city. An auto immediately stopped near us, and we told the driver our destination – Gariahat. He just told us to get in; we wondered, “Isn’t there some fare negotiation?” and asked him the rate. He said ten Rupees; it was a surprise, and I wondered if we heard him right – ‘surely can’t be that cheap’. But the guy just kept saying ‘get in, get in’ since he wanted to get past the traffic signal when it was green. We both got in but kept looking at the map and the road to see that we were really going in the right direction. After a couple of minutes, the auto stopped and waited for other passengers; that’s when we realized this was a share auto! And it so happened that this share auto was actually going to our place; the auto dropped us under a flyover in Gariahat, and the driver directed us to take the left lane.

During the auto ride, we saw the Birla Mandir – a famous temple built in a few Indian cities – wasn’t part of our destinations on this trip, but the white marble construction was a sight to behold even from the auto.