Kolkata

My 2nd trip to India wasn't such a pleasant one. Though 4 days were blocked for this trip, we were only staying in the hotel for 1 night and travelling for the rest.

The minute we reached Delhi early morning, we were greeted with badly polluted air. Immediately my sinus started, and only subsided at night. The air over there was so polluted that when you clean you nose at the end of the day, you see back stains on the tissue paper.

The transist from Delhi to Kolkata took a long time. By the time we finally ready Kolkata, we were half dead from all the waiting and the travelling.

No doubt the people likes to take their own sweet time in doing their things, it was amazing when we found out how they try to race on the road. Every other seconds, you could hear honkings. All the honks seemed to have different meanings too. Example: I'm in hurry, please move aside so that I can continue my race; I am overtaking you, please do not drive in to my lane; or I'm seriously in hurry, DO NOT cross the road now!

In their 3 lanes road, one could see many different types of transportations. From cars to lorries, buses to tricyles, rickshaw to motocyles, and even cows. Somehow they could squeeze 5 transportation into a lane. At one point, there were even transportation going on the wrong side of the road. Though there seemed not to be any traffic accidents, we, as passengers were terrified much of the time.

Some of the streets were filled with rubbish dumps. And within the same pile, you could see people, cows, crows all digging from the same pile. Then perhaps a little down the road, clothes that were hung out to dry along the road divider or the againts the buildings. With so much dust, I wondered if these people ever have clean clothes to wear at all.

The 1st thing that we noticed about our hotel was that it was facing a river. Opposite the river bank was one of the biggest slams that I had ever seen... The hotel was not yet complete as the workers were still putting cement on parts of the building...

The 1st few available rooms were given to the ladies. We were glad that we could finally get a little rest. My roommate and my relief were short lived. Once entered the room, there were so many house flies that we were going to faint. Our request to change room was turned down as it was full house. Spraying insecticides was almost useless as there were hole on the walls! The insects could just fly in through the holes. But thank God, just when we were about to take a short nap, the hotel staffs managed to get us another room.

The show venue was lovely. It was at Hilton Hotel. The Indian dancers were great too, putting up native Indian dance items and some pop items. Our changing rooms were outdoor. But since it was a cold season in Kolkata, we did not have to suffer from the heat like in Singapore when doing an outdoor event.

Over all the show was a success. We hope that the clients will enjoy our performance so much that they will get us to do their event in Thailand.

P/S: This time round we didn't get hungry at all. Our dear client had made sure that we had enough to eat for the whole trip.

In case anyone wanna read more about this trip, click HERE