Carol here,

We spent the morning going by boat to an area of Calcutta where special worship statues are made out of straw and clay, painted and used in festivals after which they are tossed into the river(we saw some floating past the boat just before smoke started pouring out of the back wooden cover of the ship. Turns out the assistant captain was cooking his fish-looked to me like he was going to burn the boat down with the breakfast).

Passed lots of men doing their wash beside the river (must be bachelors), and children that came swimming through the strong current up to the boat.

I just got back from treasure hunting. Found a “department” store of a sorts that all the families were shopping at and had a great time purchasing a “salwar” (pants, long top with slit on side and a scarf). I waited 5 minutes while the tailor added short sleeves (at no charge) and then went on to a wonderful Thai restaurant for dinner.

We also saw beautiful flowers made out of “pith” from a plant (that I can’t pronounce, much less spell) and a friend and I stopped to buy wedding “jewels” (paper and plastic flowers adorned with diamonds and rubies that the bride would wear for her wedding portrait. I guess we were inspired by the wonderful wedding that we saw the night before at Hotel Camille in Santiniketan. A beautiful canopy had been constructed of tuber roses, an offering to the wedding couple in the form of various very seductive looking fruits set in baskets below. Along with the canaopy were Christmas decorations put up for the wedding (??) and an interesting arrangement of plastic geraniums that rotated in pots above dry ice (??). Although we happened to arrive at the hotel just as the celebration began, and without an invitation, we were invited by the wedding party to eat, dance and share in the evening. Since the wedding did not start until midnight, and we had had a 14 hour travel day, none of us managed to make it to the ceremony.

The hotel in Santiniketan was rustic. Water poured out of the ceiling into the dining room from a leaking pipe the whole time we were there, the bed was a platform with a two inch mattresss and the tv sets in the room were for show, but the staff was very kind and tried with great effort to make us feel honored guests.

Mike says I have to get off, its late and we leave early tomorrow for a flower market and then off to Bubaneshwar.