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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Friday 24 November 2000 (Day View)

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24.11.2000 – Friday 24 November – Calcutta

• I payed my 100 rupees for the room for tonight then went and booked a train ticket to PURI, leaving Saturday night at 9:45 PM, which cost 194 rupees. I then made my way down to the zoo on the metro. This underground metro is India’s only underground city rail system, and in stark contrast to all the other city rail systems, it is spotlessly clean and efficient. It cost a princely three rupees to get to the nearest metro station to the zoo, then a hot several minutes walk until I got there. Another two rupees saw me into the zoo compound, which is quite large. It is a little bit daggy, looking as though a budget increase wouldn’t hurt anything, but contains a large collection of animals (most of which seemed alive) housed in semi-natural surroundings. Altogether, a large and interesting zoo, I spent a tiring few hours walking around it.
  A few Indians stopped me and asked to have their photos taken with me.

• I still feel quite affected by the flu, or pollution, and quite worn out from walking so much. My throat is very sore; the pollution really is terrible here. In the evening I tried to email, but e247 (the email server) was not working. Internet is very slow, and reasonably expensive too. As night came on, and with nothing to do after darkness had fallen, I went and watched the movie “SHAFT”; which didn’t impress me very much. The theatre, on the other hand, did impress me. By Australian standards, it was very large, with an upper balcony and two different lower sections, all of which had different pricing structures. The music was very loud. Straight after the movie finished I went to bed, at 11 PM.