Nov 9, 7:26pm

All the Indians say Kolkata and all the westerners say Calcutta. Either way, it's a big sprawling mass with traffic like a grand prix, horns and street noise that never fully stop, and all sorts of amputees walking up to you or just flopping about on their blankets. I'm lodging at the Centerpoint guest house just off of Sudder St which is the backpackers' hang. The dormitory beds at Centerpoint are rs75/-, or about 90 cents a night, and they're up six freaking flights of stairs. My roommates this time are a Frenchman named Jean-Marie, and an Englishman named Martin. Jean-Marie has driven overland from France to India five times, through Syria and Iran and a mess of other weird places. He and I are going to play chess once I've finished this entry. Martin (who endured the 24-hour train ride with me) is a guitarist who is living off the interest of his invested money, about as simply as one can. He has traveled extensively throughout southeast Asia. Both are in their late fifties, I would imagine.
I've managed to secure a pass for the concerts this weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing/hearing an India that's patient, collected, and linear: an apparent antithesis to the India I see around me--obsessed with selling and money, disorganized, inefficient. I'm also excited to see what the performer-audience relationship is like; this is the only thing I've permitted myself to imagine as an ideal (thank God, or a few ideals would have been dashed by now) and nothing would make me happier than to envy their rapport. Finishing up the weekend is santoor guru Shiv Kumar Sharma from Kashmir, a man who has more or less legitimized the santoor (a sort of hammered dulcimer) in Hindustani music. The only thing I'm apprehensive about is that Willem, the fellow traveler I met in Delhi, is anxious to come to Calcutta and gatecrash the concerts. Ha! Max the Australian warned me that this might happen. Willem is a great guy (and quite intelligent), but I'd have to agree with Max that issues of consideration often do not register for him.
I've formulated something of a game plan: eager to get out of the big cities, (I still have a constant sore throat and phlegm due to the acrid, dusty air) I'm going to Darjeeling while I still have my sleeping bag (I'm going to mail it home as soon as I can. It's too warm, and it's winter), and then get a Sikkim travel permit and head for the mountains. Sikkim is a state/province of India, but it's nestled between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, so it's a bit calmer of a culture, and the weather is much colder. I'll get a 15-day travel permit, then hopefully a seperate North Sikkim permit, which should enable me to get pretty close to Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world (after Everest and K2). Then it's going to be another long train ride that bypasses too much (like Bodhgaya and Varanasi, two cities I'll visit eventually) to attend the Tansen music festival in Gwalior during the first week of December. So everything is swimming along so far. I played my fiddle for the first time over here today, and it sounds like a toy! The wood has swelled suddenly and choked a lot of the sound. Thankfully, my audience of Bangladeshi hostel mates haven't heard any great violin soulds to compare it to, otherwise they may not have been willing to sit around exchanging songs and clapping earlier today.
Cheers, everyone.