Calcutta 2011

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I was in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) from 4th Jan to 9th Jan'2011 attending a workshop at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. The workshop was awesome both from academic point of view as well as the hospitality. Academic part I mentioned more or less in my previous post. Regarding the hospitality part, it was perhaps better than many conferences/workshops in Europe or in the US I believe. The food, the drinks, the banquet dinner were so amazing, I am having a hard time now in getting adjusted to the hostel food :( I would love to go there whenever I get an opportunity. Calcutta as a city I did not explore much, although I had one whole day free. But the public transport there is not so good although this is the only Indian city which has bus, metro and tram both. The problem is that metro and tram covers only a small portion of this huge city and 99% of the time you have to travel by bus only. And the roads (as far as I have seen) there are so small compared to other metro cities like Bombay and New Delhi, it takes too much time to travel by road. The first day I reached Calcutta, I took a cab from Howrah station to Salt Lake Sector 1 and it took more than one and a half hours although the distance was around 10-12 km. Apart from that Calcutta suffers from various political turmoils also. Political parties start rallies, protests anywhere on the street resulting in huge traffic jam. It happened during my stay there also after eight villagers were shot in Lalgarh area of West Bengal. The security of the guest house I stayed advised me not to take the risk of going out on that day. I believe there are many things to enjoy or explore in this city but the city has still to grow up to make it more tourist friendly for which better roads and better public transport is a must.