Crazy traffic, temple, bored security, and botanical garden

8 Aug Sunday


We slept in till they called asking if we wanted breakfast.  We ordered the usual: toast with butter and jam, hard boiled egg and two things of coffee :D  Coleen and I then started talking about our families, men, life, anything and everything and we lost track of time.  So we figured even if we shower once we step out of A/C room we get hot, sweaty, and sticky anyway so we brushed teeth and took off.
Our driver today, Raja, was AWESOME!  He was retired army, maybe that was why we felt so safe with him.

Raja is on the right

We first went to the Dakshineswar Kali Temple, again no pictures inside :(  We had to take our shoes off, which wasn't surprising but once we went inside the temple it was all open.  Needless to say we had some hot feet walking around.  I was perturbed a little to see locals taking pictures inside, but I respected the rules and didn't take any pictures.  We walked around the temple and many were bathing in the river.  There was a big banyan tree where people were taking in the shade and some coolness.  Of course there were vendors and a couple of the group bought some stuff with the assistance of Raja.

Raja assisting with a flute buy

After the temple we were at a loss of where to next and Raja recommended the botanical gardens and we thought it sounded nice, a good chance to get away from the city noise and craziness.
On the way to the gardens we had to cross over this awesome bridge.  There were two cars today and the other car had some issues with guard on the bridge.  He stopped them and tried to confiscate the camera, which Becky was not about to give up.  In between the driver arguing with the guard Becky slickly slid out her sim card and the guard by then agreed to just have her delete pictures.  She showed that there were no pictures in her camera ;) and they were off.  Raja saw that they were pulled over and told us to put the cameras away.  The rest of the day and drive we always asked first before taking pictures.  The was a strong military presence on the other side of the bridge and I never found out way, there was an army post... but it still felt differently.  Maybe it was the camera thing I dunno.

The gardens were interesting.  The silence, decent air, and abundance of green was nice and relaxing.  Unlike the botanical gardens in the U.S., this area was just like a big park that has allowed nature to do it's thing.  It was relaxing all the same.

these are lotus flowers

paddle boats 

that is ONE tree!

Getting back to our room we HAD to do some laundry. The hotel had some laundry service but we weren't too sure about it, and we figured to do some laundry ourselves...at least our "delicates".  We had a bucket and laundry soap so we were good to go!  I saw how they did it at the shelters on Saturday so I felt we were o.k.  Everything turned out just fine :D  It was a work out though! At one point Coleen said (she did more laundry than I did) "who cares about torture, abuse.... doing laundry by hand SUCKS!  How do they do this all the time?!"
All things are definitely relative :P