KOLKATA Youth & Old Manhood

This is the 1902 YMCA at 25 Chowringhee Road, on Kolkata Eplanade, now the Seacom Inn Hostel.

It's probably my favourite stay yet, so gets its own post.

Slow to reveal its charms and under very patient renovation (starting in 1973, by the looks), if the Soho House group got hold of this, spent a few bob, then transplanted it to Shoreditch, it would be an absolute goldmine.

Jesus is the man here, none of your cartoon elephants and monkey gods, except a frowning Shiva staring back between us and the Bible Society next door.

Old Mahatma gets a look in too, standing next to the house rules like a club chairman.

The building houses a few companies, including a health spa, an accountant and a property manager, but it is the sprawling floor spaces, ironwork staircases, stained glass windows, Members rooms and curious YM nooks, crannies and oddities that intrigue. And it has an indoor badminton court.

"as though it was put in by an Indian".

After the initial trepidation of the long staircase (no Led Zep puns, please) up to a gloomy atrium, there was the surprise of the original fixtures and fittings in the rooms, with heavy old furniture and the usual rickety pipes and wiring holding things together.

The breakfast room was a delight - polite silver service waiters serving curry on bone china plates among the old masters, plush club chairs and furnishings. It's all heavily draped from the sunlight and the outside world, but illuminated by antique light fittings and a huge chandelier. Did we just go into a different building?

VERY civilised. I'd expected the worst, but couldn't have been more wrong. Lots of middle aged westerners, too.  Oh, just like us.

And the wifi is superb.

KOLKATA Slight Return

Back in Kolkata via a shared jeep from Gangtok to dusty, dirty Siliguri.

Then an overnight bus driven by a maniac with a death wish (ours!), incessantly on the horn to anything in his vision, weaving in and out of traffic at full tilt, in the dark.  Emergency stops were the norm.

Sanctuary

 

At 6.30am I staggered off, travel sick and ready to honk myself, into the strangely quiet Koltata Esplanade bus station. Two minutes in a thankfully slow cab took us to the wonders of the YMCA Seacomm Inn.

On the main drag of Chowringee Road, it was just round the corner from Sudder Street, almost boho, almost cosmopolitan, a bit of a Westerners' retreat, but still with the bustling New Market, the beggars, the street life. Pasta and pizza at places like Beer & Shots and The Blue Sky Cafe got us back in the land of the living after all those dizzy heights.

We went for a laid-back street walk down posh Park Street, visiting the early 19th century, largely British, South Park Cemetery*.

Slowly being restored, the site also boasted a large collection of plants and trees, perfectly in tune with the huge obelisks and intriguing mausoleums they were slowly supplanting.

Stopping for an ill-advised beer at Baron & Earls, we found that young Indian professionals also like sitting in expensive lounge bars after work, listening to terrible club music with an unwatched sports channel blaring away. Who knew?

And now we travel onward, way, way out of town.

*No, I didn't find Kenny's grave.