Sundarbans Tiger Tour and a bit more

Wow.
India really does get better the longer you stay. Heres a VERY brief lo-down if you can't be bothered to read the whole blog:
The food is AWESOME.
visited a few sites in Kolkata including mother Teresas tomb and the Victoria memorial, a few churches and a graveyard and an art gallery. It's all been really good.
Met up with some NZ girls (who have been living in England) to go on a tiger hunt at the nature reserve - didn't see any tigers but saw a lot of other cool animals. Met a NZ man and his Aussie wife on this tour who were really nice. AJ our guide was wonderful.
Found more interesting accomodation. At least there's a window.
I'm going to the Andaman Islands!!!


Food:

this is where I get my somosas and onion bhajis.

I've frequented a few little almost western cafes where I've met other lone travellers like myself and it's nice to chat to them over breakfast. But my favourite place for breakfast has been this little street stand where they do the most wonderful flavoursome somosas ever! They also do some delightful potato patty things and onion bhajis at night. So Good! And it's like 3 Rupees for a somosa! Such a bargain! I had 2 somosas and tea for 11 rupees this morning! I've been finding all the coffee shops and trying them out. I've come to the conclusion Barista does the best coffee, but everythings a bit overpriced. I went to cafe coffee day and was disappointed in the coffee but the brownie was superb. Then I went to Flurys and didnt really ever want to go anywhere else. I shall go there whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself.... which I must do more regularly... (I am having to stem my chocolate/biscuit/cake eating because of the cellulite dimples that have started appearing on my bum. But seriously I've found the best cake in the WORLD! the eggless chocolate truffle. I'll need to buy one more to take a photo). I've been to a few restaurants too, I haven't found the food too spicy at all - it's all basically perfect, although I was at one Bengali restaurant the other day and I couldnt eat all the chillis in my bindi bhaji.  I went to a restaurant called Prince when Alexis and Anthea arrived and there was a whole array of different flavours in our different curries all made to perfection. We all fitted in 2 mishti dhoys each as well, they're like little yoghurty things which have like added sugar and basically they're inexplicably delicious and just what you want after a hot curry. Last night I had my first dosa. Oh my goodness - Amazing, like a rice pancake which is crispy with a spicy potato and tomato, chilli and onion filling served with a bowl of curry and a coconut sauce. Yesterday Alexis also bought one of the Kali egg rolls which the place is renowned for and I tried some of that and may have to buy another at some point. I JUST LOVE ALL THE FOOD!

Activities:
I had a busy day visiting the Victoria memorial which it said in the lonely planet would probably be one of the most beautiful buildings in India if it was built as a romantic gesture for a living princess rather than built for a dead colonial Queen...

Victoria Memorial and Alexis.

It was so good to come to a place where they had information! You weren't just looking at pictures it explained who painted them and what they were about - how refreshing. It also had it translated in Bengali, Hindi and English - most impressive. And the place was beautiful and restful, although I was asked to pose in a few pictures and take a few pictures. I went to chill out in the gardens and ended up speaking to a fairly safe Indian man - he was like in a suit and didn't ask if I was married as like the second question - we talked about religion and colonisation and stuff first.
Afterwards I walked slowly on purpose so that we didnt have to walk together and then went into this art gallery, contemporary stuff. It was really good. Inspirational. I love art galleries. I was taking photos of a lot of it (most of it) and this guy noticed and was like - do you want a brochure and it had pictures of all the works in and was free so I was like - yes please :-)
I went back to both of these places yesterday as Alexis wanted to go on her last day in Kolkata and I was quite happy to go again as there were pictures in the VM that I wanted to draw as you're not allowed to take photos - (they really should do postcards). We also chatted to some of the actual artists when we went to the art gallery as they'd seen us discussing their paintings. So it was all good.
I visited a cemetery - South Park St Cemetery - I find them quite peaceful and some of the tomb stone things were huge! Much bigger than one would expect but not particularly elaborate. It's also nice to get away from all the beeping of the horns and people. There were a few people shouting in the cemetery... I have no idea about what. Insane numbers of house crows were loitering in the trees and there were quite a lot of chipmunks running freely over the graves. No photos allowed though.
I walked down AJC Bose road one day to Mother Teresa's motherhouse. It seemed to be a largly muslim community down that way and I wasn't sure I was walking in the right direction. Once I got passed all the street stalls selling food, there were all these rubbish clothing stalls and then a really long mechanics garage road; where insanely, as if the car horns beeping of the road wasn't enough, it was like the only thing being fixed on this road. Seriously - why don't they just have a regular volume horn? I eventually found the motherhouse and walked in to see the tomb, I misead a sign as you couldn't take photos and misread another sign saying that you shouldn't take your shoes off - but I think a lot of other people did the same. The tomb was fairly unremarkable, there were some lovely paintings on the wall though and the atmosphere was lovely and peaceful, prayerful. I said some prayers and left as I'd come at a time when the museum and the church opposite were closed. I intend to go back at some point.

Sundarbans:
Alexis had facebooked me to say she and Anthea were doing this tour and I would I like to go - I'd been thinking about doing it by myself and thought it would be nice to go with people instead, and they suggestede this tour operator. It was great!
http://www.tourdesundarbans.com/
I went to speak to Rajesh as I was in Kolkata and the other two weren't and had already booked. It was very easy for me to be put on the same day as them and Rajesh just showed me on his computer what we would be doing. It was all very straightforward.
Our group - which also comprised of a couple from Australia - assembled at 8 and left at about 9. We had delightful cucumber and tomatoe sandwiches on our quite comfortable mini bus to drop off point. AJ, our lovely guide, pointed out various sites on the way. Including Kolkata's rubbish mountain. Where you could see building on top of it, he explained were recycling centres, where the poorer people could find work. The river flowing in front of us was black. There were a variety of smells along this road. None of them were good, and all of them were incredibly pungent. We passed flats of land holding water, I dont know what was in there - maybe fish, it didn't look like rice paddies. We stopped for tea a few times before hopping onto a boat to cross to a Sundarbans Island. There was a busy market which AJ explained was where people from all the islands around came to as it was the best shopping place. It did seem to have everything. I would have happily lost myself there for a day but we walked to find rickshaw carts (I'll upload a pic rather than trying to explain what they looked like). It was fun but not the most comfortable. I also got bitten a lot on my bum at this point. We stopped at a local family's house to have our lunch which was divine. Then we walked a short way to the guesthouse. We could have stayed there but 3 of us opted for staying the night on the boat.
We walked around the village. Lots of goats and children. A temple a sort of sea wall. Mangrove trees. We saw wild bees in a tree. The atmosphere was very different. Very islandy. We then had a boat trip until sunset - watching out for mostly kingfishers - of which we saw a variety, and other birds like bee eaters. Very good.
We came back for a meal (just magnificent) and regional music from a folk band. After listening to their 1st song, I wondered if they knew what timing was and if they were just making it up as they went along. But after that it got better, we even danced. We were joined by 2 Israeli people who seemed much more into the music than the rest of us.

Mangrove trees.

Slept on the boat after playing cards ( it was most comfortable but AJ had said there weren't mozzies. I was covered in bites the next day - so do opt for the mosquito net should you do this. The one on my arm has started to go down but there was a strange red circle around it about 8cm in diameter. We started our hunt for tigers on a day so misty we couldn't see the banks of the river. It cleared before we entered the reserve, but we didn't find tigers. It was still a wonderful experience spending the day on our pirate ship type boat. We saw loads of kingfishers, plovers, herons, cormorants, sandpipers, shanks; as well as monitor lizards (AJ was imossibly good at spotting these) and crocdiles (ditto from the last brackets) and spotted deer. I think that was it. Oh and monkeys - the scary ugly ones. The backpackers have a pet rescued one - it's a baby but I'm still scared of it...

lovely food - made on the boat!

Anyway - we returned the same way we came. I've not been driven in the dark since travelling - I was sort of avoiding it on purpose. I listened to my music and closed my eyes but didn't sleep and it was one of the best journeys I've had - I will do that more often. If I look out the window (in particular the front window) I do feel like I'm going to die lot.
Really wonderful time. So nice that everything was organised for me. Such lovely people. Such great food. And I love nature.

Future plans:
So I came here to work with the nuns and I've been here a week now and the ball's still not rolling. And it wont for another 9 days. (although I might go to the briefing today) I was reading my guide book and read about sundarbans and wanted to go so did - and then I ended up on the page about the Andaman islands. They basically sound amazing. And I rung up a tour airline to get some quotes - like 600 quid for return flights so I decided to check online the next day. I must have been in a particularly impulsive mood because when I found flights for 317 pounds I just booked them. So I'm off there tomorrow now for 9 days. I'm quite excited. I'm so glad I planned nothing before I came - I'm loving just making it up as I go along. Basically this is what life should be like all the time. But we've made a society which is completely unnatural and stresses most of us out most of the time. I am more than ever tempted to do what Samuel L. Jackson does in Pulp Fiction and just become a bum....

My new room in Kolkata :-)

I don't think that was really quite everything. But you've probably had enough.