Udayan - a new beginning

Today we were lucky enough to have yet another informative and interesting tour guide who showed us the highlights of Kolkata. We first visited The Black Hole Memorial which was dedicated to the 123 British lives that were lost in the incident of 1756. We then travelled to the Jain Temple. This was completely different to all the temples we have visited so far as you can see from the picture below. It was a dazzling mixture of mosaics, spires and columns. The mosaics in particular were made up of thousands of beautiful mirrors and coloured stones.

The next part of the tour took us on to visit the home of India’s greatest modern poet, Rabindranath Tagore. It was an impressive mansion containing personal belongings and examples of his work. Tagore actually wrote the Indian national anthem and is highly respected by all. On our way to the final part of the tour we experienced yet another classic Indian traffic jam! Our final stop was the Botanical Gardens that were founded in 1786 to develop a then newly discovered herbal bush called “tea”. However, the highlight of the Botanical Gardens was definitely the world famous Banyan Tree. The pictures below will not do it justice, it is unbelievable just how vast an area it covers. The branches actually grow back into the ground!

We arrived back to our hotel for a delicious lunch of burgers and chips – Indian style! Later on we are all heading off to the markets to hopefully buy material for outfits which we will wear on our next visit to Udayan.

We apologise for the disruption to the website today (11/02/2009). This was due to heavy traffic due on the site. All has been resolved and the usual service resumed.