Kolkata - Gifts, Tea, and Botanical Garden

Cal decided sleeping at night is for babies that aren’t world travelers. Breakfast was potato sandwiches We went out shopping again. The malls here feel just like home, except there are more people working the stores and all the inventory is meticulously arranged.

Today we got to meet the groom’s parents. They came with gifts. Everybody was given clothes to wear for the wedding. They also brought a fruit tray, desserts, and candy for everyone.

Andy (my brother-in-law) and I went out looking for coffee and coke for people back at the house. We did find coffee, but it was instant coffee and overly sweet. We got some chai though which was really good. Its very creamy. They are constantly making it and it’s running at a boil until they filter it into a pot. You usually drink out of little clay cups which appear to be disposable. You see them littering the streets, though most vendors have a disposal bucket.

I wanted to get out and explore today so we checked out the Botanical Garden in Howrah (Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden). That’s on the other side of the Hooghley River, which is the westernmost part of the Ganges which splits off in a large delta in this area. Traffic was pretty bad, and it might have been an hour long ride.

One thing I was told repatedly before coming here was that the traffic is crazy. That’s true, but it doesn’t take that long to get used to it. Everybody squeezes up to the front at the stop lights. The motorcycles all weave their way through to the front, often as a small lane to themselves. Lanes are not important here. Everybody drives wherever there’s space and it’s constant merging. Stop lights are obeyed during traffic, but at night when it’s less busy some drivers will ignore them.

The biggest attraction here was the Great Banyan tree. When we got there we were a bit confused though because it just looks like a forest. I guess the main trunk had to be removed 99 years ago to keep the rest alive. The whole forest is technically one clonal tree. I don’t think I captured just how big the tree is in this photo because I didn’t really know what I was looking at at the time.

Plants from 5 different continents grow here. I took a lot of pictures so I’ll assume I got one from each continent.

We had a bit of trouble getting a ride back home. The T-mobile service works, but it’s pretty weak so you don’t really know if it’s working or not. We did get enough of a signal to call an Uber, but it took 20 minutes to get to us. Even after that, it was still less that $6 after the maximum tip amount on a 45 minute drive.