So we decided yesterday to head into downtown Kolkata which has most of the restaurants and shops. We cabbed there are we are still a little frightened to use public transit after hearing that it does not really stop and you just have to jump off! Anyways so we were cabbing in and there were suddenly huge numbers of people walking on the side of the road, by huge numbers I mean thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. I think we saw more people in half a day in Kolkata than you see in Vancouver in a month! We had no idea what was going on and could not communicate with our driver to figure it out (it ended up being a political rally, but no one seems to really know what for). So we just watched in awe at the mass of people, including the women in their beautiful saris (I cannot get over the how beautiful the women are in their saris are, I feel so drab and boring in comparison).
After spending some time looking around, eating, and attempting to shop (we got led down these dark narrow alleyways that smelled so terrible I cannot even describe...we decided after all this not to buy anything which did not make the man selling very happy:), we wanted to catch a cab back to our place. We unknowingly decided to catch a cab just as the political rally ended. Rach and I hopelessly tried to catch a cab among the thousands of other people that were on this one street corner for quite a while until one finally stopped. We got into the cab and he said that the meter was broken (this is a way to overcharge tourists by just making up a huge price once you arrive). We tried to get him to turn it on and were having no luck until a man passing by noticed the meter was not on and started to yell at the cab driver. Within seconds at least 50 Indian men swarmed the car and were all yelling furiously in Bengali at the driver while rach and I cowered in the back seat. I honestly thought the cab driver was going to fight the other men or at least kick us out of the cab but he finally turned on the meter on. It was such a surreal moment as it was so unexpected. In general Indian men have a pretty bad reputation and we have already felt pretty uncomfortable when walking around, but then they surprised us by making sure we were not being taken advantage of by the driver. Anyways, it was a very interesting day to say the least!
We started work today and it was amazing...we are both already in love with all the kids:)
~Kim
WOWSER, that is quite the adventure...I'm thinking that jumping out of a moving bus may have been the safer choice ;) Still, I'm glad everything worked out with the cabbie...stay safe and enjoy!!
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to hear more...
~V