Disembark at Belur Math, the monastery of Swami Vivekananda, one of Kolkata’s most holy sons, and Hinduism’s first emissary to the West. As he spoke at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, women swooned.
I once bought a volume of his teachings from a man near College Street, his sparse stock, laid out on the pavement, comprised mostly of dog-eared Bollywood fan magazines and romances. It was like finding a volume of the sermons of John Wesley among fading issues of OK and Mills and Boon novels.
The room in the monastery where Vivekananda lived and died is as he left it, an iron four-poster bed, under a canopy of gold cloth, the walls covered with portraits garlanded in marigolds, an overpowering smell of incense.
A boat takes you back across the river to Gopal Ghat. Climb the steps, past the funeral party making its way to the water’s edge, into the narrow lanes and alleyways of Kumortuli, the potters’ quarter, where a surreal array of clay deities are fashioned for religious ceremonies, life-size Krishnas and Durgas arranged in rows outside the workshops.
From there, amble through the streets, past the crumbling 19th-century merchant houses, with their wooden and wrought iron balconies draped with washing, to the Marble Palace, the eye-popping mansion built in Neoclassical style by a Bengali merchant and philanthropist named Raja Rajendra Mullick.
Mullick was Kolkata’s Charles Foster Kane, cramming his palace with a bizarrely eclectic collection of art and objects: classical Greek and Roman sculptures, kitschy statues of Jesus, Napoleon and Queen Victoria; paintings by Joshua Reynolds, Murillo and Rubens (or attributed to them anyway); and a huge empty ballroom, shuttered against the piercing sunlight, hung with enormous chandeliers, its flaking ceiling supported by bamboo poles. Another miracle.
But that was for another day. Instead, Raghu suggested a walk in the Maidan. Kolkata’s equivalent of Hyde Park, or Central Park, the Maidan is some 1,000 acres in size, encompassing the Eden Park cricket ground at one end, and the Kolkata racecourse and the Victoria memorial at the other. It is a place of scratch cricket games, courting couples escaping the attention of their parents, picnicking families, loafers and idlers. There are horses, too, pulling tourist carriages or to hire for rides.
The horse we came across was beyond that. It was lying on its side, panting heavily, a wound on its flank. It looked to be dying of thirst. There was nobody around who might have been its owner – if, indeed, it had an owner. There was only one thing to do. A stall selling drinks and sweets stood 50 yards away. For an hour, Raghu, Shamik and I went back and forth, carrying as many bottles of water as we could manage, and pouring it into the horse’s mouth. A crowd of curious onlookers gathered. What madness was this? At length, the horse rallied and tried to struggle to its feet, then fell back to the ground. A boy came running with a plank of wood. Pulling and heaving, we levered the horse into a standing position. It looked around, shook its head, took a few faltering steps and went on its way, to cheers from the crowd.
Over the course of 24 hours I had witnessed a miracle, been stroked by a eunuch and saved a dying horse. Only in Kolkata could you do this.
The detail
Abercrombie & Kent (01242 547 760; abercrombiekent.co.uk) offers a seven-night trip to Kolkata: £2,600pp, based on an October departure with flights, transfers, guiding and B&B accommodation. Bookings are covered by A&K’s flexible booking policy. Overseas holidays are currently subject to restrictions.
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LOURDES
There is no doubting the unfailing level of interest in this small town in the Haute-Pyrénées – of all places in France, only Paris has a greater density of hotels. Lourdes’ popularity is partly down to the beauty of its setting, in the foothills of the great Franco-Spanish mountain range, on the banks of the river Gave de Pau – but largely due to the tale that has swirled around it for over 150 years. In February 1858, a 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, reported a visionary encounter that religious authorities would deem to have been the Virgin Mary. The figure would appear to Bernadette 18 times, discussing tenets of the Catholic faith – before instructing the young woman to dig in a certain spot. The spring water which bubbled up would soon be declared to have healing properties; a belief which endures to this day.
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