Asia Part 1 - India

Well, I’ve just finished the first leg of the trip, and what a trip it has been so far! I’ve been through some wildlife sanctuaries, and into the mountains, discovered an entirely new world of tea, met some pretty cool people, and learned a bunch of new things.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping up with a post every 3 to 4 days, but looking back at the amount of distance I’ve covered, I’m not too surprised. Today’s post will try to cover my time in Kolkata, Jaldapara, and Darjeeling as well as how we traveled to each of those locations, and some interesting things that have happened along the way.

Stop 1: Kolkata

First and most important note to those flying into big cities in developing countries: Know the EXACT location of your hotel on a map, know the route (via Google Maps or something similar), and TRIPLE check that your taxi or transportation method knows where you are going as well. This is even more important if you will be arriving late at night. Getting a taxi took quite a while (about 1 hour) because of the requirement to barter with the drivers in order to get a rate even close to what the locals pay. And once we had a taxi, it was a shared one (which wasn’t an issue for us, but you should be aware), and it turned out the name of the street we wanted to go to also happened to be the name of the neighbourhood that it was in. The driver knew the neighbourhood, and after a while even managed to find the street, but he had absolutely no idea where the hotel was. Once everything was all said and done, we had to pay more than expected for the taxi because he continued driving around trying to find us a hotel with a spare room, and we were charged much more than we budgeted for the room for the night because we were left with very little choice on the matter. The moral of the story is to have exact, specific (preferably printed) directions to where you will be going.

The next thing I learned that is very important is knowing how to barter and negotiate. I’ve been learning slowly and one of the tips I’ve been told so far is to make your first price offer at a point so that the middle ground between what they said, and what you said is the price you are willing to pay. For example, if you want to buy a pair of pants, and the shopkeeper tells you he wants $50 for them, and you are only willing to pay $35, you should make your first counter offer at around $20 or $25. From there on, as they go closer to the price you want, you should as well. The most important rule of bartering is that you need to be prepared to walk away - and to be honest, that probably understates it. You should be EXPECTING to walk away empty handed. If the shopkeeper has any indication otherwise, they’ll stand firm at a higher price and you’ll end up overpaying. There are certain things that don’t have elevated prices (at least in India, they don’t), and the most common of these is food. Food is seen as a necessity (even for tourists - who’d have known!) and so in general the price you are told is going to be the same as locals pay and you should avoid trying to haggle with the price. The items that you should haggle over every single time include any transport that isn’t organized publicly (mainly taxis in every form available), accommodation, and anything that is bought from a shop or street stand.

Now, on to what we actually did in Kolkata! Our first day, after sorting out our taxi and accommodation fiasco, we spent wandering around the streets, trying the food, gathering some necessities, and getting our bearing of where we were with respect to the other things we needed to find. I definitely recommend planning your first day in a new country, or new area of a country as a calm day with no explicit plans.

Stop 2: Sundarbans National Park

The real adventure for us started when we left for the Sundarbans National Park in West Bengal for a 2 day, 1 night expedition. We departed on our second day in India in the morning and by late afternoon we had arrived at an eco-village. We were treated with a tour of the local village town, a fantastic dinner meal, and a musical presentation by some villagers before we departed on a late night boat tour of one of the nearby islands. The stars were absolutely beautiful, and the serene, quiet atmosphere was unparalleled. After returning to the camp for a short night of sleep we awoke at the crack of dawn in order to embark on another boat tour. This one proved to be an all day tour that visited multiple of the islands in the National Park in search of Bengal Tigers. While we were unable to spot any tigers, we did get a chance to see a wide variety of local birds and a few crocodiles. The price, 4000 Indian Rupees, is quite high when compared to many other things you can buy with the money in India, but when converted back to USD, is just under $70. If you are going to be staying near Kolkata, this is something I would definitely recommend.

Train Travel

After arriving back in Kolkata, we spent another day exploring, which proved to be much like the first, before heading off to our next location, which was Jaldapara, a small town in the North East of West Bengal. We travelled overnight by train in a Sleeper Class car for our first leg of travel which was about 11 hours. For the budget traveller, this is the overnight option that you want. I would highly recommend against taking the General class tickets because you will be cramped on seats, won’t have a bed, and will not have any fans, much less air conditioning to keep you cool. The Sleeper Class gives you a cot-sized bed, no sheets, no pillow (so bring your own), only just barely enough space while lying down to be comfortable on the beds, and a set of 3 fans to be shared between the other 7 people sharing the beds in your immediate vicinity. Not the most comfortable, but it definitely was a reasonable price (even with the ‘service charge’ our hotel manager charged for booking the tickets for us). After arriving in New Jalpaiguri (a transport hub) in the morning, we took train using General Class to Madarihat and then walked to our very basic hotel.

Stop 3: Madarihat & Jaldapara

Madarihat is a very small, rural town just outside of the Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary where we stayed for one evening. There wasn’t too much interesting about the town itself, though the locals seemed much more friendly and relaxed. The activity we chose in Jaldapara was an elephant ride in which we had the opportunity to see a rare one-horder rhinoceros at close proximity. Again, a large number of birds were seen, and we also encountered what appeared to be a ferret-like animal, though I’m not quite sure what it was. Similarly to our Sundarbans excursion, Jaldapara was definitely a worthwhile stop for us, though unless you explicitly would like to do an elephant ride, or have an interest in rhinos, this might not be the right excursion for you since it was a little out of the way.

Stop 4: Darjeeling

Our last stop in India was Darjeeling. Originally a settlement created by the British in the 1800’s, Darjeeling is now famous for its tea and its beauty. Situated in the mountains at an altitude of about 6500 feet, it is a MUST SEE for anyone in the West Bengal region. Becca and I absolutely loved the views, the food, and the tea. The weather was definitely more temperate as well.

We arrived late in the evening after a train from Madarihat to Siliguri (New Jalpaiguri’s twin town) and an evening Jeep ride through the mountains. After some food, we enlisted the help of some very friendly locals to find our hotel, and slept the night away. While in Darjeeling, we stayed at 3 different hotels for a total of 4 nights. Initially, we stayed at Hotel Dolma, which was quite upscale compared to what we were used to, and had a good price comparatively to the hotel where we stayed in Kolkata. Hotel Dolma however, had no working internet, and at 1500 India Rupees per night, was 500 Rupees per night more expensive that we several other options in the city.

Our second evening was spent at Hotel Shambala and while I expect that our stay was an unfortunate series of mishaps, we were thorougly unsatisfied with our stay. The internet didn’t work, and I had to figure out why for them, we were unable to use a computer with internet that we had been told we could use in the meantime, the hot water in the shower didn’t last long enough for any decent shower, and the walls were paper thin and when the neighbouring room’s children decided to run up and down the hall at a late hour we found it difficult to sleep.

Finally, for our final two nights we stayed in Hotel Hill Crown Resort located on the lower half of the city in a more residential area. It turned out to be much closer to the main market, was the same price as Hotel Shambala (1000 Indian Rupees), gave us a much nicer view of the mountains, had working internet, and the staff was much nicer and much more helpful. If staying in Darjeeling, this is the place I would recommend.

As for our activities there, we didn’t do very much. We decided we would rather spend the time recuperating after our extensive travelling thus far, and boy was it worth it! We simply wandered the city lazily, enjoyed some amazing food, bought some tea, watched a lightning storm over the mountains and in the city from our room. And best of all, we spent a bunch of time sleeping.

The trip so far has been out of this world, and we are just about to start the next big leg - a trek through the Himalayas in Nepal. More to come on that in a few weeks when we get back. I hope this information helps with planning some of your travels, and I’ll be back soon enough with more stories and experiences!