Top Things to Do in Kolkata

Step over sleeping dogs into smoke-wrapped lanes. Samosas rise from kadais in newspaper cones still ink-damp. A grandmother presses rose-water sandesh into your palm: "My grandfather sweetened Tagore's tea."

Start in a slum pottery colony. Kilns glow like oversized diyas. End on Park Street licking 1950s chocolate mousse. Clay dust to air-con in one afternoon, Kolkata's social layers laid bare.

Leave the roar behind. Hear fishing nets slap, egrets lift off nutrient ponds. End with chai on a bamboo pier, skyline a faint graphite smudge.

Guards let you into the 1780 Writers' Building courtyard. Booted ghosts of junior clerks seem to march. Smell ledger glue, hear rubber stamps echo like distant gunfire.

Howrah Bridge hums underfoot. Descend into Mullik Ghat: pyramids of marigolds under sodium lamps, barefoot boys chanting auction numbers like mantras.

Yellow Ambassador taxi, windows sticky with betel nostalgia. Tailor the route: marble chess at College Street, hidden Chinese temple in Tangra where incense curls around Kali idols.

Sunrise among marigold heaps at Mullik Ghat, river fog mixing with petal scent. Sister Nirmala's footsteps through Mother House's silent chapel. Day two: South Park Street Cemetery, moss-covered angels leaning like drunks.

Victoria Memorial's sun-blanched marble, Kumartali idol-makers shaving straw torsos, then a riverside wrestling gym where men coat themselves in red earth smelling of iron.

Guards wave you into Posta grain bazaar. Lentils pour down tin chutes like edible waterfalls. Freeze sweat dropping from a porter's chin into a turmeric hill.