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Kolkata: A few Thoughts on accessibility

I’m always keen to discover how accessible a destination is, not only for me as The Blind Tourist, but for those with other disabilities. As I’ve said before, each disability faces different challenges when traveling. As a simple example, a person in a wheelchair may have difficulty getting around a tourist site, if insufficient work …

Kolkata: My Impressions of Poverty

When we chatted to friends before our trip to India, we were cautioned that the extreme levels of abject poverty would hit us every time we ventured out of the hotel. I know how much I’m affected by seeing people experiencing hardships. So I was concerned that my visit to Kolkata would be overshadowed by …

Kolkata: The Road less Traveled

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” – the Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. That may be a strange way to start an article about an experience I had in the city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on my recent …

Kolkata: Cricket Match or Rock Concert?

As the 90 000 crowd surged to their feet with a mighty roar, I found myself wondering if I’d somehow slipped from one dimension to another. While it might have felt like it, we weren’t at a rock concert. We were at a cricket match – but a cricket match unlike any I’d seen before. …

Kolkata: The Victoria Memorial

Several people told Craig and I that the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata was a “must-see” site. One of them told us to allocate an entire day since it was far from our hotel and there was just so much to see. Another told us we’d probably only need an hour to take in the site. …

A Visit to The Mother House

From the title of this post you might suspect I’ve switched genres and started writing bad science fiction. I promise that isn’t the case. The Mother House is the name given by locals to refer to Mother Theresa’s home in Kolkata, India. And that was the first site we visited on a day out in …