Kolkata is a slow-burner.
At first look, the Indian metropolis, previously often called Calcutta, is a haze of air pollution, incessant honking of horns and half-built skyscrapers with bamboo scaffolding hanging off them like cobwebs.
How can anybody keep sane in a spot so raucous, so grubby, so hectic? However you then enterprise down a aspect road, flanked by dirty however grand Nineteenth-century villas in Italian model, its pavements cracked by the roots of banyan bushes. The visitors noise recedes.
Unspeakably splendid: The Victoria Memorial is incessantly mistaken for the Taj Mahal
For 7p or thereabouts, you should purchase chai, spiced with ginger or cardamom. The seller scoops it out of an important iron pot and, with theatrical flourish, pours it from an important peak right into a clay cup.
Kolkata has begun to disclose its charms. This is how you can take pleasure in it …
BEST FOOT FORWARD
Individuals do all the pieces on the road — washing beneath standpipes, taking their morning shave with pavement barbers, and having shirts pressed with flat-irons heated over charcoal stoves. Wander by way of town and you will see its life.
For extra formal sightseeing, Calcutta Walks has a crew of well-informed younger guides who lead small teams. They will present you the grand architectural remnants of the Raj.
Their Confluence of Cultures Stroll winds by way of the previous city, taking in a Chinese language temple and market, a synagogue, Hindu temples, Christian church buildings and mosques, all inside traffic-free lanes. From £24pp, calcuttawalks.com.
BEAUTY OF BOATING
Jam-packed public ferries journey alongside the nice Hooghly River — from the Botanical Gardens south of town to the Kali Temple at Dakshineswar within the north. Rent a brightly painted personal boat, so you possibly can feast on biryani as you watch folks crowding right down to the water within the quite a few ghats (steps), public gardens and temple precincts that line the shore.
TOP SHOPS
Dakshinapan is a market dedicated to Indian textiles and handicrafts. It’s managed by the federal government, so costs are truthful and the selection large: from saffron-coloured quilts to gossamer-fine Bengali muslin. Rendezvous at Dolly’s cafe, which is famed for its ginger-scented tea.
At first look, the Indian metropolis, previously often called Calcutta, is a haze of air pollution, incessant honking of horns and half-built skyscrapers with bamboo scaffolding hanging off them like cobwebs
GREEN SPACES
Individuals will let you know that the Victoria Memorial seems to be just like the Taj Mahal. It does not. However Lord Curzon’s grandiose, palace-sized, white marble monument to the Raj is splendid. Spend a day people-watching within the formal gardens, the place households loll on the grass of their glittering Sunday outfits.
Go, too, to South Park Road Cemetery, the 18th-century burial floor for the younger Englishmen who got here right here to work for the East India Firm and died with pathetic swiftness — to be commemorated with tombs as splendid as their lives had been quick.
TUCK IN
Meals stalls are in all places, promoting paper cones stuffed with bhelpuri (recent herbs, tamarind and tomatoes with crunchy puffed rice) and plates of aromatic papri chaat (fried dough wafers with potato and yoghurt). Bakers make quite a lot of nut and honey-filled muffins and pastries.
For those who choose to eat indoors, strive Flurys, the Artwork Deco tea-room the place good Kolkata women have been lunching on rooster and cucumber sandwiches for almost a century.
DRINK UP
There’s chai, after all, and lassi — candy, salted or spiced, made with buffalo milk. A road vendor will chop the top off a inexperienced coconut and hand it to you with a straw.
Or there’s bitter, refreshing chaas — buttermilk flavoured with cumin, coriander leaves and a neighborhood delicacy, black salt.
On School Road within the college district, ebook stalls line the street and unfold out across the shabbily grand Indian Espresso Home. Right here, waiters in spectacular headdresses are Gallically disdainful.
‘Espresso home,’ says one, crushingly, after I ask for tea.
POWER PLAYERS
Kolkata’s clubland is as elite as London’s St James’s, however price penetrating should you can.
The Bengal Membership (thebengal membership.com), in a palatial home that after belonged to Victorian historian Thomas Macaulay, was initially for whites solely. As we speak, the grandees within the leather-based armchairs are Bengali.
Non-members can attend occasions: there is a live performance of Sufi music whereas I’m right here.
The Calcutta Membership (calcuttaclub.in) was based in 1907, and open from the begin to males of all races, however solely not too long ago to ladies.
The backyard is a luxurious on this crowded metropolis and a stunning place to sip a candy lime soda.
ESCAPE THE CITY
Retreat to The Rajbari Bawali, a heritage resort two hours’ drive away.
From right here, stroll into the village with its romantically tumble-down temples. Rooms from £79 B&B, therajbari.com.
GETTING THERE
Emirates (emirates.com, 0344 800 2777) flies from Gatwick to Kolkata by way of Dubai from £456 return.
