Traveling within India

I went to Kolkata last week on a fact-finding investigation with HRLN. I'm writing about it in two separate posts, because the experience was so surreal that I feel I had to split it up. On the one side, is the privilege of traveling by air, seeing the new international terminal here in Delhi, and staying in AC hotels. On the other side are villagers most of whom are without electricity, in a remote area, where police have no compunction in beating innocent people for no good reason. The whole trip was kind of like India, in a nutshell. Land of the extremes.

So: first for the fun stuff! We traveled to Kolkata on a flight that originally came from JFK, so even though we were flying domestically, we went through the International Terminal, which is beautiful. Karuna, Smriti and I treated ourselves to a cup of coffee at The Coffee Bean (heyy that sounds familiar). Their drinks menu was similar to the U.S., but the food options were a little more localized :) I also got a kick out of the wall paintings to indicate gender for the restrooms - sooo much better than a stick figure (or worse, an unidentifiable figure!).

The flight was on Air India, and domestic flights here actually serve full meals, complimentary! Best flight food ever. Palak paneer, rice, gaajar muttar, kheir, and salad. YUM YUM YUM. They also had the little tv screens with movie options, which I was excited about, but then I saw that the movie playing was Paathshala, which might win the award for one of the dumbest movies ever. Oh Shahid, what were you thinking??

The Kolkata airport, sadly, was not as nice as the Delhi airport, but we weren't there for too long. One interesting quirk of Indian airports: they check your boarding pass and for security tags on the way OUT. Not sure what the utility in that is, but hey, whatever makes the men with the rifles happy.

Sunday night we stayed at Ambalika's parents' house, and then we set out for Asinsol early on Monday morning.