12th February - A Diamond Day Out

After last night's high roller living it is time for a more proletarian diversion. A day trip to the seaside seems to fit the bill. This is really just an excuse to fit in an extra train trip. We take an early breakfast and set off for Sealdah Station. Avoiding the Sudder Street taxi bandits means walking the first two hundred yards to the end of the street and round the corner.  Negotiation gets a fare that is a bit better but still more than the prepaid rate. On the way we get held up by some form of religious procession but after that there is a clear run. The station is pretty busy but the Ladies queue at the Unreserved booking office isn't too bad, and R has soon procured two single tickets to Diamond Harbour,  a small town on the banks of the Hooghly estuary to the south of Kolkata. The train ride is 60km and we pay Rs15 each, about 18p.

Wikitravel describes Diamond Harbour as 'a popular weekend tourist spot' but says nothing about its attractions. Tourism of India.com  is a bit more forthcoming, listing various attractions such as a lighthouse, an old Portuguese fort and a Naval Base. We have no wish to get arrested,  so will attempt to avoid the latter. This website also gives some weather info, saying that during October to March the weather is 'salubrious' whilst in the remaining months it is 'pretty humid, sweaty and suffocating'. The guide also advises visitors to pack a picnic but we decide to throw off the traces and take a chance on the availability of nourishment.  Last year we found a tent serving tea amd snacks at 9,500 feet in the Himalayas. The chances of starving in a Bengali travel spot seem very remote.

As soon as our train is announced (34828) we head out towards the far end of the platform.  The inbound EMU arrives and disgorges its host of passengers. D pushes and jostles his way on and grabs forward facing seats in the corner of a rather gloomy coach. Even this early in the day the floor is a sea of rubbish. The train is one of the older units, painted in dark green and cream, with wooden bench seats, and with doors that are permanently open. The windows have horizontal bars and there are ceiling mounted fans but these are not switched on. We depart three minutes late, which seems to be the default for Sealdah local trains, and trundle out of the station at not much more than walking pace. Once the complex point work at the station throat is cleared the pace is upped. The train is not full with a seat available for anybody who wants one. Some prefer to stand at the open doors. The train is heading south through some of Kolkata's less scenic areas. The stations - Park Circus and Ballygunge - have relocated their names from more desirable real estate to the west. 

South of the city proper we enter the administrative district of South 24 Parganas, which is the sixth most populous district in India and has a population larger than the entire nation of Honduras.  As you can see D has done extensive research but cannot find what lies behind the name of the district.  There is a North 24 Parganas district. S24P contains a good bit of Kolkata's urban sprawl as well as the Sunderbans National Park and the coastal plain that we are visiting today. At about half an hour out we pull up at New Garia station. On an adjacent platform is the southern terminus of the city's Metro line which will save us the hassle of a taxi at Sealdah on the way home. The train is filling up a bit by now although nowhere near crush loading.  One practice that we notice is that families who have to stand will pass their small children over to sit on the knees of total strangers.

As we leave Kolkata behind the vendors start to appear. On long distance trains they are mainly selling comestibles,  on this train nearly anything goes.  Tea towels, flannels, self improvement books, haberdashery, some flat white discs that look like candle wax, and a man with beautification products and tools. Q. Who on earth buys this stuff. A. R does. She spots the nail clippers that the last man has and invests Rs10 in a pair. They subsequently turn out to be useless. The best vendor of them all is a man who is selling cheap bling necklaces. He enthralls the crowd in the coach as he goes through his routine. The young ladies seem particularly smitten and many of them part with some cash.

By now we are in the countryside.  The train stops regularly and at certain stations lots of people get off to be replaced by crowds boarding.  Some of these places look unprepossessing to say the least but there must be some attraction. At one point the coach starts to bounce in a rather alarming manner. D is able to reassure R that it is just a case of dipped joints. More or less on time we pull into Diamond Harbour. D consults the maps app, we cross the main road outside the station and dive down an alley. Immediately the crowds are left behind and we can walk in relative peace and quiet with just the odd two wheeler to disturb us. We may be slightly off the tourist trail here as people come to their doorways to stare at us walking by. D begins to wonder if the 'haph pants' (trans : shorts) were a mistake. 

Our intended destination is the shore,  where the map shows there to be a road. When we get there it turns out to be a flood wall with a concrete top, hardly the Promenade des Anglais, but a perfectly acceptable walkway, with anti motorcycle barriers at each end. The estuary shore is not particularly attractive at this point but there are some large, well tended gardens on the inland side, and some birds to watch. Some of the people walking say 'Hello', others just burst out laughing.  We smile and wave in a vaguely regal fashion. On the path we meet a coconut vendor and ask him for one. He searches his cart, finds a large one and gets stuck into it with his machete. We drink the juice through a straw the hand the shell back do he can split it open to access the soft inner flesh. It is delicious. 

A point is reached where the wall turns inland and we can see, across an area of marshland, a hotel with pleasant gardens and shaded tables. We identify this as the Hotel Punyalakshmi from the map and decide to head for it. This is easier said than done as the bund ends in a maze of small streets that take us back to the main highway. We have to walk quite a long way past the hotel to find a road that will take us in the right direction.  The temperature is in the early 30s, the sun is blazing and there is no shade. As we approach the hotel there are the sounds of a party and banners announcing some kind of Medical Reuinon event. We ask about the chances of a cup of tea and are directed to the bar, a separate small building with an entrance facing away from the hotel. Inside it is pleasant enough with A/c and cricket on the television.  Only one table is occupied and we settle down in a corner. Tea does not feature on the menu but fresh lime soda and beers do so we are both happy. We decide that a snack is also in order and go for veg pakoras with chips. We have arrived just in time as the place fills up, not just with men but with family groups.  Our food arrives. The pakoras are good and the chips are cooked in a light, crispy batter, even better. Glasgow are you listening?

The timetable is consulted and we see that we should have plenty of time to walk back to the station,  buy our tickets and get the train. This train is a more modern unit with plastic seats, diamond pattern grilles at the windows and some sort of forced air system that provides a bit of relief from the heat. We leave with about 50% of the seats occupied which gives us both a window seat. A man gets on with some kind of ancient looking boogie box which he places on the overhead rack. He then begins to move around the coach singing into a wireless microphone and taking himself extremely seriously.  There is not a hint of a smile from him, nor any chat between numbers. He changes tracks using a device that looks like a TV remote control. After about twenty minutes,  as the train is filling up, he comes round for donations and seems pleased with 10 rupees. The rest of the vendors are rather dull apart from the man who sells glass bottles of Seven Up, and who appears to open the crown corks with his bare hand, causing a very loud Pop! in the process.

We leave the train at New Garia and switch to an air conditioned metro coach. R gets a seat in the Ladies reserved section but D has to stand in the doorway. This part of the metro is quite new, running on an elevated section above the streets. As the train fills up D finds himself surrounded by Bengali ladies all pressing in very close. Is it the magic of the haph pants? The penny drops. These ladies are all vertically challenged, unable to reach the high level handholds and are drawn to the vertical handrail adjacent to D. The metro does have Eastern Railways' locals beaten when it comes to convenience as we have only a short stroll back to the Fairlawn from Park Street station. A couple of people have mentioned to us that they have heard that standards are slipping at the hotel. When the biscuits supplied with afternoon tea today turn out to be Cream Crackers we have to start thinking that perhaps they are right.

We are targetting Jimmy's for supper tonight. When we stopped off there for a beer R mentioned that she had never eaten crispy wontons so starters were easy to sort. The main course decision was trickier and we finished up ordering too much but we did enjoy what we managed to eat.