Kolkata day 2

Oh yes, there is some energy left in me to write day 2 ;). Well, the first thing; man the sun rises really early in this part of the country. Am I being an idiot or being in east really does matter? I mean at 6 in the morning, it was full light in the room, birds started chirping outside and I was wide awake. I did try to sleep a bit more but that was a miserable attempt to be in bed for another hour or so.

I had to go to workplace by 12 noon so I had plenty of free time. They prepared aalu paranthas in the breakfast but not so good, totally understandable though. Preparing good paranthas is kinda North Indians’ patent :D. Anyway a cup of tea can always fill the gaps.  So had my breakfast and tea and left for workplace by 11 or so. It was hardly 4 kms so reached there by 11:30.

Change of weather has its shot and nose has started running a bit. Also those guys have their ACs switched on in the office, so it was even more troubling for me. To reduce the bad effects, I kept on taking regular doses of tea from a khokha outside :D. After a suggestion from a colleague, I also tried a cake from the same khokha and it was really good.

For some time there was nothing much to do and I was sitting kinda idle. So I thought why not look for a Café Coffee Day around. Well, I searched in Google maps in my iPhone and it showed the nearest one, some 300 meters away. Before leaving for CCD, I had an egg roll (for just Rs 10…if you have seen the rates in some posh areas in Delhi, it would sound inexpensive for sure) from a shop nearby and it was real good one. So to look for CCD, I started following the directions given by Google maps. Luck gods were not happy, I tried for 15-20 minutes but couldn’t locate where it was. Finally had to come back and had to take tea from the same khokhe wala :P.

By 6 pm, I was free and left for the guest house by yellow taxi. And oh boy I saw something new about taxis here. When you stop at some red light or in some traffic jam, their meter starts counting the wait time and the charges are added for the time you spend waiting. This is not the case in Delhi. Also the charging meter of these yellow taxis is bit complicated one. Wikitravel says:

The fare is 2 times plus Rs 2 the reading of the meter. The Meter starts from Rs. 10, which means Rs. 22 actually.

Now I don’t know what the heck is this. Nose is running so not able to calculate what exactly they want? Why can’t they bloody set their meters to show the actual fare? 😛

The last thing “dinner” for which we all are fighting ;)…these guys were serving fish & rice that I was in no mood to have. So I went out, walked half a km and found a Punjabi dhaba where I could have daal roti. The food was good and not very expensive too. After enjoying the dinner & the evening walk 😉 here I am at my guest house.

Almost all the free time, I have been Facebook’ing. So much on Facebook that I am kinda fed up of it now. I think, need to stay away from it for some time. Or I shall not touch it after getting back to Delhi.

Tomorrow I am totally free. Let us see if I can utilize it for some site seeing or it also gets dedicated to bloody Facebook ;).

Good night guys…