Day 24

Kolkata
We arrived in Kolkata yesterday after a long day-- we woke up at 5 am, went on an early morning walking tour of Chennai, stopping by a Hindu temple, took a morning flight to Kolkata, was delayed, ended up in a ton of traffic in Kolkata, and were running about 2.5 hours behind our schedule. We finally arrived at our hotel (the Oberoi-- another crazily fancy hotel. I think that the Taj Man Sing, our Delhi hotel, has been my favorite overall but this hotel and Le Meridan in Pune were very fancy. This hotel is charging me almost $10 for a HALF AN HOUR of internet and over a $100 for a basic message). We met the American consulate based in Kolkata and had an overview of the city from local.

Today, we visited a Madrassa (our first and the only one in Kolkata that is co-educational) which was very poor and run-down and then a tour of the city (including the Victoria Memorial, a lavish building built to celebrate Queen Victoria, the first empress of India). We then visited the Missionaries of Charity (the organization that Mother Teresa started) and the tomb of Mother Teresa.