A Train Ride to Kolkata

We walked to the train station in Raxaul on the morning of the 7th and I'd forgotten what it was like to be the only white people around. You get used to the stares fairly quickly. The train system was fairly easy; the board says the daily trains with the number and name and then you go and find them. We were on 3AC - the cheapest class with AC. The trains are more comfortable and more spacious than National Rail and contain a lower number of annoying chavs than Southern. We spent 20 hours on the train and I've had train rides up to London seem longer.

The scenery is something to look at, there are miles and miles of fields with no habitation whatsoever. The villages that we passed through seemed poorer than Nepal, but we only really saw Gorkha which is a relatively rich part of Nepal (especially compared to the far west). The most interesting thing I saw, however, was the dead dog. Morbid as this may seem this dog was very dead. It's head and front paws were on one side of the train track and its tail and back paws were on the other side of the track. And they were very much unjoined in the middle. It was severed and covered in flies. Didn't put me off supper, which was my first propoer meal that day and therefore delicious.

We got to Kolkata at 6am (this morning, 8th May), found a guest house and then had breakfast. The novelty of finding a restaurant, choosing food from a menu and having an actual meal hasn't worn off. You don't appreciate things until the Maoists take them away. We then went to the Victoria Memorial Hall built to comemorate... Queen Victoria. The foundation stone was laid in 1906 and it was finished in 1921 and the spectacularly white building is now a museum which is very impressive. It's a shame that they don't sell postcards because there were some beautiful paintings and there were no photos allowed. The Hall is set in a huge park. A park that strangely resembles Hyde Park.

That had been one of the things to really strike me about India, you can see parts that are very British. Some of the train stations could have been in London (if they were a bit grimier). You can tell that India used to be part of the British Empire while Nepal wasn't. Although due to Kolkata's importance for the British this may be exacerbated here compared to the rest of India. We shall see :)