My Travels

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In keeping with my blog title, my first official post will be none other than a review of my trip to India! This week I just got back from the city of joy, so here is my experience of the two and a half week trip…

My first thought when I stepped out of Calcutta airport, apart from the weather (it’s so humid out there you are practically swimming every time you walk outside), was the sheer number of people. Four and a half million people in Calcutta alone- I have never seen so many shades of brown! Perhaps even more striking is the number of these people in poverty – in India, poverty means poverty: people sleeping on the streets on nothing but a dirty plastic bag they scavenged from a rubbish dump, children sent out to beg for money, men who have lost limbs to disease forced into manual labour because they have no other option… seeing it on charity adverts on TV is not enough to prepare you for the actual thing, and even though I see it every time I visit, I can never get used to it. It’s safe to say that India is a country of extremes- filthy rich or total poverty, high rise flats or village mud huts, flaming spice or bland rice…


But the single best thing about India – not the economic power house, not the beautiful temples – is MCDELIVERY. This is not a joke. McDonald’s deliver right to your door! Finally a country has seen the gap in the market and taken advantage of it. Of course, if this happened in England McDonalds would have to give statins instead of the Monsters Inc. toy so that the obesity problem doesn’t balloon up…

The last thing I am going to say is that the average height in India is 152cm: I AM ABOVE AVERAGE! (by like 0.4cm but who cares, I may never have that feeling again).

So there you have it, my musings on my trip to India. The bottom line- would I recommend it?  If you want a cultural trip and a gentle reminder of how lucky you are in the west, absolutely. If you want incredible food at really cheap prices, absolutely. But if you are looking for a luxurious holiday, absolutely not. 

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