Feb 7-Arriving in Kolkata

First off all, these are long. I don't expect anyone to read them. It's more therapeutic for me! But, if you do read them, there's some cool stuff!

After a sleepless night, 6:50 a.m. rolled around. The eerie sky I mentioned was eerie for a reason…fog. The fog was so bad, that our flight was delayed. Eventually, we were flying the friendly skies of KingFisher Air. To my luck, I had a middle seat. My knees wedge nicely into the seat in front of me so I took a solid 10-minute nap.

At the Kolkata airport, we were picked up by a guy holding a sign with Brian’s face on it. He didn’t speak English so we just followed the pointing. It was about 9:00 am and the sun was already out in full force. Within 60 seconds in the parking lot, I was approached by three women, begging for their next meal.

Then the Mario Kart started. Brian and I were in the back seat. I was taking pictures of everything through the window. He warned me not to roll the windows down too much, but didn’t say why.

It took 45 minutes to get to our hotel. It was the scariest 45-minute drive of my life. The honking, the weaving, the passing people so close that you literally drive them off the side of the road…at one point, we were going 60 down the highway in the right lane and in the left were KIDS riding their bikes. On the highway! There are four lanes of cars on a two-lane road. No cops and no street signs.

Out by the highway, there were huge areas of open land, but dotting that land were construction projects that had been started and abandoned. In the medians and on the road’s edge, people had erected makeshift tents to live in. Cows, abandoned dogs, billboards and people were everywhere. Kolkata has a population of over 18,000,000, two times the size of New York City. There are 87,000,000 people in India. Staggering numbers.

Seeing the extreme poverty everywhere made me anxious about my hotel. Not to worry, my room is safe and awesome. I don’t think I will venture too far from the entrance, however. I can guarantee I’ll get lost and would never be heard from again.