Walking through the city of Joy-2

One week post the first walk we started again for our second walk & we decided this time we would do more walking/exploring & less looking for tea joints :)

Kalighat Temple

The ghat @ Kalighat (check the color of water

Kalighat- We started again from South Calcutta, Kalighat to be precise. Now I have been to the temple multiple times, but I have always had bad experience due to priest or other temple staff who you typically encounter in famous temples. Only in case of Hindu Temples you would find a discriminated system (different queues basis the money you contribute), differential treatment (basis the money you hand over to priests), etc going on in an open & unapologetic manner. Now these things are difficult to find (at least not openly) in gurudwaras, mosques, churches, synagogues, etc. Gurudwaras especially has a great system where everyone is considered equal. Now there are hindu temples where these issues are not there, but Kalighat isn't one of them. Without digressing further I will come to point, the idea was to see the area & check how good the temple looks & finally, have a look at the ghat. Temple from outside looks huge but there isn't anything striking about the temple. We then started walking around the temple, into the thin lanes & busy streets full of shops. In a lane a few kids were playing cricket & in another a young couple was getting married. It was an area full of excitement, we moved towards ghat post that. Needless to mention that it was one of the dirtiest water body that I have seen in my life. Something needs to be done here, hopefully London-ization of this place will begin soon ;)

Flags of famous football teams

Also found here in one of the by-lanes, flags of both Mohun bagan & East Bengal Football teams, who are the two biggest football clubs in Calcutta. You just have to watch a match at Salt Lake stadium to believe the frenzy they generate.




We then moved towards central part of Calcutta, starting from Mission Row. Since it was a few days before Christmas, we saw that most of the churches were decked up & people were practicing carols. We went inside Mission Church & spent some time there. Roads were empty & beautiful, it was cold hence at many places people were burning wooden stuff to get some warmth. We walked for the entire stretch till Central Avenue. And it was time for a Tea break.

Kali Babu's shop

Kali Babu- Now those who know the central avenue, would know Kali-babu's Tea joint for great tea & awesome Samosas. Its a pretty ordinary looking place, which I have always seen fully filled up with people waiting for the famous tea-samosa combination, more so in winters.




We started moving towards northern side of Kolkata. The destination was Girish Chandra Dey & Nakur Chandra Nandy, Hedua. And on the way our first stop was Thanthania Kali badi, this is a small temple but again a famous temple in north Calcutta.

Post this we stopped near Swami Vivekananda's Ancestral House and Cultural Centre at maniktalla. It was a beautiful place with an enormous statue of Swami Vivekananda at the entrance. Even the building was beautiful & huge, after clicking for a while there we figured out that it can be a decent place to come & check during its working hours.

Post this next stop was Hedua lake, now we wanted to capture the carnival feel of the place by clicking pictures but soon we ourselves got engulf into it. As soon as I saw a rifle & a board full of balloons, I knew what I had to do. We shot every nail, coil, coin & even a wire, which was strung off a rope, before we moved ahead. While going around the lake, we found out that this was a usual hanging area of young couples, who do not get private space for expressing their love. Lack of proper coverage of light bulbs didn't hurt their cause. At the end was a typical place where elderly of the locality would get to have their regular adda.

Post this we reached the famed sweet shop & tried out 3-4 varieties. Now its not a fluke that this shop is extremely famous & at any point in time is thronged by consumers. It was time for nalen gur, which happens to be my favorite type of sandesh. After trying 3-4 variants of nalen gur, we moved to chocolate sandesh, which was also pretty good. But the best was reserved for the end, it was nalen gur sandesh wrapped in fat slice of Malai, and it was heavenly. We had two rounds of the last mentioned variety & all the good work done by walking throughout the day was nullified, but it was completely worth it.


The last bit of the fun was reserved the notorious auto-rickshaw drive till kankurgachi. The vehicle was decked up with disco light & a CD with choicest of himesh hits playing on the music system at its loudest. With the auto wallah driving like there is no tomorrow or there is a beautiful damsel in distress who is supposed to be saved by him , it was a fun way to end the day.