After a good night’s sleep at the Airbnb in the yoga center, we took a tour of the adjoining school, a boarding school for underprivileged kids. It occurred to us that we might want to return here at some time and volunteer at this school; it seemed like a good fit for us. And we had a chance to take a little trial run when the kids assembled for morning muster in the courtyard, and we led them in rousing renditions of those two perennial favorites on the hit parade “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, and “Head and Shoulders”. It went rather smashingly.

Then we said our goodbyes and caught a tuk-tuk to the airport. Our driver was the son of the driver who’d brought us out there the previous day; but while we’d been able to bargain Dad down from the fare he’d originally quoted, Junior wouldn’t budge one cent. (We strongly suspect the pair had been in collusion on this point.) So, having little recourse out there in the sticks, we agreed to his price of 600 rupees (a little over 7 dollars).

Our understanding, however, was that this sum was supposed to include parking for his little jalopy. But when we got to the entrance gate, we learned that we were expected to cough up another 35 rupees for parking — this was the assumption by both the driver and the security guard. When they got you, they got you.

Inside the airport, we were waiting in the check-in line when a baggage handler came up and grabbed our cart, and began pushing it somewhere — so naturally we tagged along. He led us out of the queue, and around it and into another one, near the front. This felt rather awkward, and we had no idea how such a maneuver could be explained or justified. And then he wanted us to pay him for executing it. Of course, we politely but firmly declined. First of all, we hadn’t requested his intervention on our behalf; and second, we didn’t really appreciate being thrust into a position of looking like arrogant foreigners asserting white privilege.

Since it was an airport of such Lilliputian proportions, haunted by only a few planes a day, the baggage screeners (the Indian equivalent of TSA) were apparently severely bored, and tried to fill the time by conducting the most exhaustive baggage screenings in the world. They literally unpacked our bags completely (no, they were not so gracious as to re-pack them), examining and asking questions about every little item. In the end, they confiscated a miniature pair of scissors that we’d already flown across the globe with, as well as our eyeglass repair kit. Yes, eyeglass repair kit.

In most of the places where we volunteer — and even in most of the cities we visit on the way — it’s very difficult to find reading glasses without going to a doctor. And it’s pretty much impossible to find repair kits to patch up the glasses we already have. So we packed one along from the States. It consisted essentially of a few screws and a couple of tiny screwdrivers (one Phillips, one vanilla) the perfect size for those screws. But it seems the security folks thought a two-inch screwdriver was too much of a threat to someone somewhere. So now we’d have to squint our way across the country.

Our plane, which was largely filled with Buddhist monks who seemed surprisingly oblivious to the other passengers, was a propellor plane, a first for us. But riding it felt no different from riding any other plane.

When we landed in Kolkata, we initially had trouble getting online. But finally we were able to book a ride to our Airbnb for the next three nights. As mentioned before, we’d originally booked it for four nights, but had to cancel the first because a canceled train left us unable to get out of Gaya on time.

Our accommodation for the night was a comfortable little three-room apartment that was quite satisfactory and a colorful contrast to the dingy alleyway we had to make our way down to get to the front door. We did however have to be careful about brushing against one particular wall in the bedroom lest we get some of that colorful paint on ourselves. No, not wet paint, but dry, powdery paint that was much easier to clean off.

While in the kitchen cooking dinner, we several times heard someone out in the street saying “Hello, hello”, just outside our window. It made us wonder if he was yelling through the window at us — it didn’t appear that he was actually able to see us, as we were unable to see him. Had he seen us go in earlier, and then, seeing our light on in the kitchen, just decided to stop by and have a chat through the window? Or was he a street person not in command of his faculties who just yelled out random greetings through random windows? We had no idea, since we never saw who he was or what he was doing. But the whole thing seemed just so India.

In any case, we slept well that night, and the next day we were ready to tackle Kolkata for the first time ever.

9/20/2022