I recently returned from a trip to West Bengal, India, as part of a cultural exchange funded by the U.S. State Department called Communities Connecting Heritage. Yes, this was a work trip, but it became also deeply personal for myself and the four young women who accompanied me, for various reasons. So, it is fair game for my person blog as well as whatever I will be writing for our work blog.

Here, a la my fall trip to Southern France, I offer some vignettes of the trip with a glimpse into the sites, sounds, tastes, and emotions I experienced during any given episode. First up, a tour of North Calcutta/Kolkata. (I will default to Kolkata, the now official Indian version of the name, though both spellings are used and seem acceptable.)

The staff of Kolkata based NGO that we are partnered with for this exchange, Contact Base, suggested a walking tour of one of the historic neighborhoods of the city. We had no objections to this idea whatsoever. A fairly new company, Calcutta Walks, offers a number of these tours. After a cramped but exhilarating trip on the Kolkata subway (which got us to our destination much quicker than plying the streets across town), we emerged to street level to meet our guide, Ram.

Single file (least one of us gets clipped by a motorbike, bicycle, or other conveyance) we followed Ram through narrow streets and alleyways, pausing here and there for stories about the architecture, history and life of the area. Passersby seems amused but not taken aback by a group of obvious tourists following like sheep and snapping photos left and right.

I cannot give you details of where we went. If you plunked me down, Ram-less, in North Kolkata I would be absolutely lost within seconds. We were on the tour for three hours, but I doubt whether we traveled outside a square three quarters of a mile. We paused to taste typical Bengali sweets (which are very sweet indeed), we took tea at a historic house, we breezed through a market, we were in and out of courtyards and we crossed and recrossed busy thoroughfares (which requires finesse and nerves of steel).

One of the last stops was at the tiny shop of a 86-year old engraver. This gentleman was full of self-deprecating good humor, and his workspace was a wonderland of the artifacts of a lifetime. He recited Tagore poetry, eagerly exchanged business cards with his visitors, and generally was so lively that it energized even the most weary tour-goer. And by then, I for one was pretty weary.

It was dark by the time we finished. Our car met us at the end of the tour, and we hurtled back toward our guest house in the rush hour bustle. But, I took a bit of that sense of the hidden nooks and crannies of West Bengali culture with me the rest of the trip. The sense that I could not possibly understand and process everything that I was seeing and experiencing, but that doors and alleyways of culture were being opened to me, and I should just go with it. And I did.