Our return to Kokata following our improvised ‘tour’ of Bihar & Jharkhard didn’t start smoothly. The train was an hour behind schedule so the city was up and commuting leaving a dearth of taxis at the pre-paid rank. An hour later we were finally sat in the back of an ancient ambassador and on our way back to Broadway Hotel. Of course the driver didn’t know the address and regularly stopped to ask directions but we eventually got to the correct place. The cheeky bugger had the gall to ask for a Rs100 tip which not only goes against the whole point of pre-paid transport but the fare only cost Rs90! Yet again we were exasperated with people trying to bleed us dry – NO MORE TIPPING!!!!
Following a couple of beers before boarding the train in Ranchi we actually managed to grab some sleep over night so didn’t feel the need to crash out. Instead we relaxed and reorganised our stuff ready for our next side trip. Luckily Kolkata is quiet on a Sunday as most of the shops are shut so wandering over to Eden Gardens was surprisingly pleasant. Our plan was to buy a couple of tickets for the Kolkata Knight Riders vs Mumbai Indians IPL game that would take place the night we got back from the Sundabans. We’re not particularly fond of this form of cricket but knew there’d be a large, enthusiastic crowd and thought it would be fun. Besides which, Steve has long harboured a desire to visit this huge, famous test match ground. We found the cricket ground easily enough but silly us, the tickets weren’t on sale there.
Luckily the sales office was only the other side of the park in a sports club; unluckily thousands of others were headed in the same direction. We hoped they were headed to a political rally in the area but suspected it would be wishful thinking. IPL is immensely popular with both of these teams fielding Indian heroes – it looked like the 90 000 seat stadium was going to be a sell-out. On tracking down the sports club we’d inadvertently ended up near the ticket hatches but queue jumping was out of the question. The police and other officials had their lathis out keeping everyone in order and there were mounted police on hand too. We saw several people receive a swift whack and one bloke was removed by the scruff of his neck and told to go to the back. The trouble was the end of the line was 1km away and a friendly policeman informed us it would take about 3 hours to reach the head of the queue. In the backing hot open sun – no thank you. The ticket offices would be open on the day so we decided to try our luck then.
