Running for the train

now has a whole lot of meaning for me. On Monday morning I set off first thing (7am) and headed into the city to meet up with some friends from New Zealand in order to travel to see the place where William Carey set up his work. We caught a cab to Howrah station. This station is the largest and busiest in Calcutta. I am used to busy train stations in London but I was not prepared for this. I have heard people describe "a sea of people" and this is definitely what I saw. It was like a raging river and we had to cut across the centre of it. Quite a daunting feet.

We made it on to the train and made the half hour journey to Sirampore. The area is idyllic and very peaceful. Quite a haven from the busy streets of Kolkata. We caught a rickshaw to the college that Carey set up about 150 years ago and did a tour of the campus. I will never again complain about the lack of resources that I thought we had at University. The books available to these students would not fit into a quarter of the space of the library at the university I went to.

A group of military students were having a class on the front steps of the college and as soon as we walked in the jumped up and started asking us lots and lots of questions. I'm getting used to being approached and treated like a long lost friend. It's going to be quite strange to go back to London and walk down the street with no one noticing.

We then walked along the river and then had a beautiful lunch at a rooftop restaurant. The food was worth the two hour wait.

We headed back to the train station and prepared for the arrival of the train to Kolkata. The train arrived, we let the people off, four of our group got on, we waited for some others to move out of the way, the train started moving, we started running, the train got faster, we missed it.
We had no way of getting in contact with the others and to make matters worse we didn't have tickets.

The next train came 20 minutes later and we linked arms to form a chain and the five of us all managed to barge our way on. Now it was just a case of finding the others at the other end.

We arrived at Howrah and as soon as we were off the train we were swept along by another sea of people. It was the scariest situation that I had been in. If I had stopped I would have been trampled so I had to cope with the clostrophobic feeling and allow myself to be pushed along. I was very relieved when I saw the man with our tickets and were reunited with the group.

I was very thankful when when we left the station and boarded the boat that would take us across the river to home.

I learnt an interesting fact while on the boat. At one point some "clever" Australian businessmen decided that they didn't like the Indian slow boats and would prefer a speed boat to get across the river. The launched the boat and a few months later were bankrupt. The locals were not prepared to pay more than 5 rupees being charged by the slow boat. The speed boat sits there rusting away completely unused....

Did you know that I have never been to Australia but I have been very close to the Sydney opera house. How can that be? You may ask. Well please see the picture below.




According to an article that I read in the main Calcutta paper this building got it's design and is based on the Sydney Opera House. You may think that they did this because they are big fans of Australia and want to copy their great national icon.

However, I'm not sure this is the case. From what I hear they would rather have a different cricket coach to the one they have now (now for the life of me I can't remember his nationality...).



Some of you may have figured out what this building actually is but for those of you who haven't the answer is in the next photo. Read the sign carefully.


That's right it's a public toilet.