Alan's Excerpts: On to Calcutta...

Despite the delay in getting there, we finally arrived in Calcutta and made our way to the hotel. The traffic, like in Delhi, was more or less every man for himself, and we caused quite the chorus of vehicle horns by having to stop in the street to unload the bus. We picked probably the worst time to go to India as far as the weather goes. It is the hottest, most humid time of the year, right before the monsoon season. I think the highs averaged about 110 degrees Fahrenheit with very high humidity while we were there.

After a couple of days there, adjusting to becoming dependent on bottled water, the heat, the smells, the filth, many of us got sick with dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting, or some combination of them. I think only two or three of our band of 32 travelers didn't get laid up for at least a day. I had never been dehydrated before, and I made good efforts to drink water, but I think I failed to replace the electrolytes and suffered from the dilution with all of my muscles feeling wiped out. I remembered being glad at various points that I had stopped sweating all over everything, and then as soon as I would take a drink, sweat would start literally running off of me again. It took me a couple of times of going through that cycle the Saturday we were at the Springs of Life orphanage to realize that I was probably in trouble. So I was down for the first Sunday of our trip, wiped out in the hotel.

This is the view from one of my hotel windows.

This was the typical breakfast, curried potatoes and vegetables with toast and jelly (and/or a yummy, greasy fry bread), mango juice, and the international breakfast staple, Cornflakes.

Our first lunch in Calcutta at one of the fanciest restaurants downtown. Yes, it's the swanky McDonald's. What do they serve in a culture where cows are sacred? Veggie patty burgers and mutton (goat) burgers. They do also have chicken and Rachel will be happy to know, the Fillet-O-Fish made it through as well. The fries are the same and it was the cheapest place to get ice cream as well.

Here's an unwelcome site just as we were leaving McDonald's. Was it the drink? I hadn't even noticed the cell phone on the ground until I was looking at the pictures. Had I known, I would have picked it up to replace mine that "wasn't found" by the cleaning crew on the plane back from Amsterdam.

We met at the "Mother House" which is the Mother Teresa headquarters to have a common starting point to our assigned locations. This is Mother Teresa's tomb.

The big gray building is the Mother House

I thought this would be a nice picture. A mother and daughter on the bus. They have dedicated places in the busses for women to sit that are easier to access.