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2003-12-04 - Calcutta (Kolkata) (Day 232)

Unbelievable! I've moved into the hotel in the "Shining", the horror movie with Jack Nicholson which was the bane of my childhood dreams. Fed up with the roadside hotels in Bangladesh and Assam and disappointed by the two budget affairs I'd stayed in on my first nights in Calcutta, I went down the Lonely Planet's list of better hotels. I'd exhausted the entire list except for the Taj, which at US$ 200 per night was a little high for this trip and the Great Eastern Hotel. With limited options I checked into the Great Eastern only to find it's ambiance was right out of a horror movie. One had to cross long corridors with the lights out to get to the elevators in what seemed to be an unused wing of this ancient building. On the way dark ballrooms with chandeliers covered in cobwebs and silent staring sweeping boys that turned and stared blankly like zombies passed on the way. The elevator stopped between floors and the door often wouldn't open, one had to pry it open to get out jumping down onto the next floor. The room while it would have been incredibly stylish at the turn of the century, the hotel opened in 1847, were dark and threadbare with their last pleasant days being seen somewhere around the 20's before the Great Depression.

I later learned that there had been several attempts to demolish the hotel but it being a government run facility it had escaped destruction to wheeze on through its emancipated and weak state. Three days was more then enough to want to get out of that hotel and an inspiration to leave the city which caries the same aura as the hotel itself.

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