I’m recently back from my first trip to a new part of the world – India. A friend invited us to his wedding in Kolkata, and we were very happy to accept.
Kolkata (Calcutta) is a huge city. The metro population is the same as the entire nation of Norway. If you add the suburbs it’s three times the population of Norway. We were caught up in the four days of wedding festivities. So much food and so many people to meet.
There is colour everywhere in India – the sarees, the buildings, the hand-painted trucks. I found myself smiling at the beauty in the everyday. A big mega-city is worlds away from where I consider myself comfortable. I learned first-hand how it feels to be stared at because my skin colour was different.
We travelled throughout West Bengal during our ten days of travel. It allowed us to see many walks of life: hectic Kolkata, more rural Narayangarh in Paschim Medinipur, and Sundarbans National Park near the Bangladesh border. We didn’t spot any tigers, but we made new friends and saw how hard the local people work on the river and in the rice fields.
Thank you to everyone who opened their world to us and helped make our journey to India a success: the friends and family we met during the wedding, our boat-mates in Sundarban, and the dear man who helped us catch an Uber during the craziness of Puja.
Outspoken Images by Marie Warner Preston 