My Guided Tour of Kolkata

February 27th, 2012 — 5:22am

I spent 8 hours today with a professional tour guide seeing Kolkata. I asked to see the real city, and we did. Here are a few photos from today.

A man in the flower market. These fresh flowers are used as decorations for weddings and other events.

Only when you've driven in a city like this can you appreciate how laughable these words are. There is precisely zero obedience to the traffic laws here.

We had lunch at a Bengali restaurant run out of a rescue mission. The residents work there and benefit from the proceeds. The upper-left is a whole fish, which I ate while thinking of the horribly dirty river I saw earlier. You only live once right? So far I'm feeling fine.

This is a clay sculpture in progress. I'd name it 'Cracked Man' and keep it as is.

As my tour continued and I become more used to the normal sights of this place, I started taking more pictures of faces. This boy was walking by our car while we were stuck in traffic.

In the flower market. Everyone is staring because I'm the conspicuous white guy with the big camera. People live in their market stalls. It's a smelly and cramped place. As I was contemplating the sub-human living conditions in front of me, my guide said, 'Ok, now we will go see the slums.'