Good God, this city is a hell on earth.

I had been warned, both by guidebooks and other travelers that Calcutta is a city like no other. But nothing had prepared me for today. I don’t imagine anything could have.

I awoke early, and left the hotel after a breakfast of tea and toast in the humidity of the dining room here. It was just too hot to even think about swallowing the runny eggs and tomato slices I was offered. And this was only seven o’clock in the morning.

My goal was a bank a few blocks away, where I hoped to be able to use the ATM to get some cash to pay for my train ticket to Darjeeling.

In the street in front the hotel, the poor of Calcutta were just beginning to stir. Some still stretched out on the dirty sidewalk, others were washing themselves at the scattered hand pumps that bring water to the people living on the streets. As I approached the wide avenue where the bank was, a huge pile of rotting garbage had been dumped in the middle of the street, and some ten or so people were raking it over with sticks and metal rods, looking for anything salvageable or edible.

It was already unbearably hot, and the humidity and the overpowering stench of the garbage made my head spin. Every twenty feet or so some beggar worked me, either a woman with a sickly child or a man with some missing limb or eye. Their efforts were half-hearted. If I didn’t respond they quickly left me. But if I reached into my pocket for a coin or small bill, I was instantly surrounded and prodded for more.

I learned quickly not to give. Turn my eye and pretend not to notice. Walk faster until only my self-loathing could keep up with me.

Out on the avenue the choking exhaust from the traffic burned my eyes. Dilapidated buses packed with people spewed thick black clouds and their unmuffled engines roared. Cars and motorcycles wove in and around them with their horns constantly blaring. People walking by me on the sidewalk seemed to glare at me as they passed, as if they were silently rebuking me for the revulsion I was feeling about the place where they lived.

I can’t get out of here fast enough.

I made it to the bank and got some cash, and hoping to avoid the gantlet of beggars, took an alternate route back to the hotel, to no avail. This is a city of beggars.

Once back at the hotel I hired a taxi driver to take me across town to the Indian Railway office for foreigners. The IR has what they call a tourist quota, which guarantees some seats on all the major trains for foreigners. I was hoping to snag one of those seats on the overnight train leaving this evening.

But when I got there, all that was available was a 2nd-class hard seat ticket, no sleeper, either in 1st or 2nd class. The first sleeper ticket wasn’t available until the 11th, two days before I was scheduled to leave Calcutta and begin the series of flights back home.

Hard seat on an overnight train was not an option I was willing to entertain. I have already done enough hard seat time on this trip. And waiting until the 11th wouldn’t work for me either. That would mean staying in this apocalypse of a city for six days, and leave me with only one day in Darjeeling.

So I reluctantly left the railway office without a ticket. I did have a contingency plan, though, in case the train option didn’t pan out. And to be honest, the idea of an overnight train in India, even a 1st class sleeper, had lost some of the luster with which I viewed it from the comfort of my home.

I asked the taxi driver to take me to the Indian Airlines ticket office. The airline doesn’t fly to Darjeeling, but to a town about 2 hours away called Bagdogra, and from there I was sure I could hire a driver to run me up to Darjeeling, or as a last resort, take the bus.

But Indian Airlines doesn’t fly from Calcutta to Bagdogra every day, and it turned out that my only option was to wait here for two more days and then return from Darjeeling on the 12th, the day before I was scheduled to fly to Bangkok. Given Indian Airline’s reputation for delays and cancellations, that seemed an awfully risky gambit.

I was stumped. The trip to Darjeeling was second only to the Kailas trek in my plans, and I never really considered the possibility that I might not be able to get there. I tried to think of another option. The bus? No thank you. I’ve had my fill of third-world buses. What else, what else?

The lady on the other side of the counter was waiting for me to make up my mind.

Fuck it! I’m outta here! Would it be possible to move up the date of my departure to Bangkok, I asked. Yes, she said, after checking her computer. There is a flight tomorrow. Please, put me on it, I pleaded.

I can’t get out of here fast enough.