Kolkata, has been nicknamed the City of Palaces and also the City of Joy. City of Palaces comes from the numerous palatial mansions built all over the city and City of Joy comes from the lively and friendly and loving behaviour of all the citizens all over the places making the city more lively and enjoyable.

India’s second-biggest city is a daily festival of human existence, simultaneously noble and squalid, cultured and desperate. By its old spelling, Calcutta conjures up images of human suffering to most Westerners. But locally, Kolkata is regarded as India’s intellectual and cultural capital.

This month we bring to you Kolkata, West Bengal, as the destination of the month.

Look forward to receiving your views and feedback on our efforts to update you with the latest from India.

Marriott announces opening of new property in Coimbatore
Marriott International announced the opening of its brand new hotel- Fairfield by Marriott in Coimbatore. Neeraj Govil, Area Vice-President, South Asia, Marriott International, says, “We believe the market is ideal for Fairfield, which is a brand that enables purpose driven travel and delivers optimised value at a great price. As Marriott further expands its brand portfolio across the growing Tier II markets in India, we definitely see great potential and the opportunity for Fairfield by Marriott becoming a favourite with business and leisure travellers in the city.” The property offers 126 guest rooms, amenities include an inviting living area in the lobby, smart, contemporary interiors and high speed Wi-Fi connectivity. The hotel also has an all-day dining restaurant plus a 24/7 Market where one can shop for an assortment of drinks and snacks when required. The hotel has both banqueting and meeting room facilities with modern technology and a fitness centre.

ibis makes its debut in Coimbatore
AccorHotels and InterGlobe Hotels announced the opening of ibis Coimbatore City Centre, marking the debut of the smart hotel brand in the second largest city in Tamil Nadu. The business hotel is strategically located in the city’s central business district at Lakshmi Mills Junction, within close proximity to local tourist attractions and shopping hubs. With 129 well-appointed rooms, the hotel boasts of a contemporary design that offers unparalleled comfort and convenience.

80-room Pride Ananya Resort Puri opens doors
Pride Group of Hotels has opened its latest resort in Puri in Odisha named Pride Ananya Resort Puri. The 80-room property offers resort-style accommodation with a beautiful oceanfront. It is a walk from Puri beach and offers a pool, restaurants, a business centre, and spa among other offerings. The Pride Group currently has properties in Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Nagpur, Kolkata, Aerocity Delhi, Ahmedabad, Goa, Jaipur, Vadodara and Dharamshala and now Puri.

The Oberoi, New Delhi set to reopen on January 1, 2018
After extensive renovations, The Oberoi, New Delhi, will reopen on January 1, 2018. The hotel has commenced reservation on its website or on phone. The Rs. 500 crore-revamp project which was slated to reopen in April next year will be completed ahead of schedule. Built in 1965, the Oberoi New Delhi was closed two years ago for renovation, will have 218 rooms. It will become the first hotel in India to have an air purifier to address growing concerns over the air quality in the national capital.

Sarovar Hotels takes over a new hotel in Bengaluru
Sarovar Hotels has announced the signing of its latest hotel in Bengaluru, La Marvella Sarovar Premiere. The takeover is expected to be completed by the first week of November. La Marvella Sarovar Premiere, Bengaluru – Jayanagar, is Sarovar’s fifth hotel in the city after Davanam Sarovar Portico Suites, RBD Sarovar Portico, Park Plaza and Radha Hometel. La Marvella Sarovar Premiere is promoted by SVG Exports offering all facilities and services of an upscale five-star business hotel located in Jayanagar. With 102 rooms, a multi cuisine restaurant and a lounge bar, the hotel ensures guests a great stay. An Italian specialty restaurant will soon be introduced to bring a unique culinary experience to guests.


 

71% surge in foreign arrivals on eTV in September YOY
As per latest data released by the Ministry of Tourism, FTAs on e-Tourist Visa during September 2017 was a total of 1.18 lakh tourist as compared to 0.69 lakh during September 2016, registering a growth of 71 per cent. During January-September, 2017, a total of 10.67 lakh tourist arrived on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 6.75 lakh during January-September, 2016, registering a growth of 58 per cent. The percentage shares of top 15 ports in tourist arrivals on e-Tourist Visa during September 2017 were New Delhi Airport (53.4 per cent), Mumbai Airport (18.5 per cent), Chennai Airport (6.7 per cent), Bengaluru Airport (6.3 per cent), Kochi Airport (4.2 per cent), Hyderabad Airport (2.8 per cent), Kolkata Airport (2.2 per cent), Amritsar Airport (1.1 per cent), Trivandrum Airport (1 per cent), Ahmadabad Airport (0.9 per cent), Tirchy Airport (0.8 per cent), Dabolim (Goa) Airport (0.6 per cent), Calicut Airport (0.5 per cent),Jaipur Airport (0.4 per cent) and Pune Airport(0.2 per cent).
 

KLM’s Mumbai-Amsterdam resumes service after 16 years
In a move to enhance air connectivity, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) welcomed Dutch Carrier, KLM’s Mumbai and Amsterdam services on October 30. The airline will be operating 294-seater Boeing 787-9 aircraft with 30 World Business Class, 45 Economy Comfort Class And 219 Economy Class. The flights will operate thrice a week. Earlier, Mumbai-Amsterdam route was served with daily services offered by Jet Airways. Along with KLM, the route will be served with a total of ten services per week. Last week, CSIA welcomed Thai Smile’s maiden flight on the Mumbai-Bangkok route, the second airline after Thai Lion to start services on the sector within a month.

Alitalia returns to India with Delhi-Rome flight from Oct 30
Alitalia is ready to make a comeback to India after it stopped operating into the country in 2008. The Italian airline will start a new direct flight between Delhi and Rome from October 30, 2017. The new daily New Delhi-Rome service will operate for the entire winter season until March 24, 2018. The connection was launched to meet the increasing demand for flights between the two countries. The new connection would be Alitalia’s second new intercontinental destination of 2017, after Male, Maldives (from 31 October), and the extension of direct flights to Los Angeles, USA, for the upcoming winter season. Italy, is the second European country, after Great Britain, for arrivals from India. The flight will be on Airbus A330, which is equipped with exclusive ‘Made in Italy’ amenities. Business Class guests can relax in luxurious Italian brand Poltrona Frau leather seats that fully recline to a comfortable flatbed position, and enjoy award-winning onboard dining featuring the best of Italian regional food and wine. All classes feature newly renovated cabins and include Wi-Fi connectivity for phone calls, Internet and e-mail. Passengers arriving at Rome Fiumicino International Airport from New Delhi will get easy connections to 39 cities in Italy, Europe, North Africa and the Americas served by Alitalia including cultural capitals (such as Florence, Pisa, Venice, Paris) and many more (such as four US destinations, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Miami, as well as Havana). Departures from New Delhi operate every day at 4.40 am, and arrive in Rome at 9.00 am local time.

Alliance Air plans Jaipur-Agra flight
Air India’s Alliance Air plans to start the much-needed Jaipur-Agra flight. Madhu Methen, General Manager – Sales and Marketing, Air India, said, “Our future plan includes a Jaipur to Agra flight under the UDAN scheme. The aircraft that will be used will be an ATR. We also plan to introduce a Delhi-Bikaner direct flight on an ATR. Alliance Air will announce the dates and other details of these routes soon.”

Vistara to provide Avis India car rental services to customers
Vistara and car rental company Avis India entered a partnership to provide a seamless car rental experience to Vistara customers. Customers booked on any Vistara flight can make their airport transfer, chauffeur-driven or self-driven car reservations at the time of booking a Vistara ticket, using the ‘Enhance My Booking’ option on the airline’s website. Members of Club Vistara (CV) will get to earn 10 CV points on every INR 100 spent on making bookings with Avis, using this option. Sanjiv Kapoor, Chief Strategy & Commercial Officer, Vistara said, “It is our constant endeavour to offer our customers a seamless and superior travel experience across all touchpoints, whether it is on ground or at 35,000 feet above it.

Jet Airways introduces 3 new international services this winter
Jet Airways will introduce three new international services this winter, besides reinforcing six existing routes with additional frequencies. The carrier will introduce its first non-stop service between New Delhi and Riyadh. It will also deploy additional frequencies on the Mumbai-Riyadh, Mumbai-Kuwait, Delhi-Doha and Delhi-Dammam sectors. Effective October 29, new non-stop flights will commence connecting Bengaluru and Chennai to the airline’s gateways in Amsterdam and Paris, respectively, as part of the carrier’s strategy to connect more cities, especially in the South of the country to destinations in Europe and North America.
The airline is the first to operate flights on these routes which, along with a third daily flight on the increasingly popular Mumbai-London sector, will give guests a greater choice of convenient connections to other European cities and destinations in North America. Jet Airways will deploy its Airbus A330 aircraft on the Chennai-Paris and Bengaluru-Amsterdam routes
The new intercontinental services to Amsterdam and Paris will operate in codeshare with KLM, Air France and Delta Air Lines. Guests who are members of Frequent Flyer programmes of the codeshare partners – JetPrivilege (JP), Flying Blue and SkyMiles will also be able to easily accrue and redeem points on each other.
Jet Airways is also adding new frequencies on certain select routes, including the extremely popular Mumbai-London Heathrow as well as Delhi-Singapore, further enhancing connectivity and choice for guests travelling between North India, United Kingdom and South East Asia.
 

Kolkata - City of Joy

History

Kolkata's history is intimately related to the British East India Company, which first arrived in 1690, and to British India, of which Calcutta became the capital of in 1772. Job Charnock was widely known as the founder of Calcutta (Sutanuti, Govindapur & Calcutta) but in recent years a number of Indian historians have disputed this claim, arguing that Calcutta occupies the site of an older Indian city, centered around the ancient Kali temple at Kalighat. This claim has been accepted by the Kolkata High Court. The Court has dismissed the name of Job Charnock as the founder of the city and 24 th August as its date of birth. The historic Judgement was based upon an high level Expert Commitee findings. It has been proved that Kolkata had an highly civilized society for centuries before the Europeans first came here.

Whatever its origins, Calcutta flowered as the capital of British India during the nineteenth century, the heyday of the Raj. Calcutta University, the first modern Indian university was founded here in 1857. Calcutta became the center of Indian arts and literature, and the national movement for independence got its start here.

During the British colonial era from 1700 to 1912, when Kolkata (then known as Calcutta) was the capital of British India, Kolkata witnessed a spate of frenzied construction activity of buildings largely influenced by the conscious intermingling of Neo-Gothic, Baroque, Neo-Classical, Oriental and Islamic schools of design. Unlike many north Indian cities, whose construction stresses minimalism, the layout of much of the architectural variety in Kolkata owes its origins to European styles and tastes imported by the British and, to a much lesser extent, the Portuguese and French.

The buildings were designed and inspired by the tastes of the English gentleman around and the aspiring Bengali Babu (literally, a nouveau riche Bengali who aspired to cultivation of English etiquette, manners and custom, as such practices were favourable to monetary gains from the British).

Today, many of these structures are in various stages of decay. Some of the major buildings of this period are well maintained and several buildings have been declared as heritage structures.

Present

India’s second-biggest city is a daily festival of human existence, simultaneously noble and squalid, cultured and desperate. By its old spelling, Calcutta conjures up images of human suffering to most Westerners. But locally, Kolkata is regarded as India’s intellectual and cultural capital. While poverty is certainly in your face, the dapper Bengali gentry continues to frequent grand old gentlemen’s clubs, back horses at the Calcutta Racetrack and tee off at some of India’s finest golf courses.
As the former capital of British India, Kolkata retains a feast of colonial-era architecture, albeit much in a photogenic state of disrepair. Meanwhile urban slums contrast with dynamic new-town suburbs and a rash of air-conditioned shopping malls. Kolkata’s also the ideal place to experience the mild, fruity tang of Bengali cuisine. Friendlier than India’s other metropolises, this is a city you ‘feel’ more than simply visit.
                                            

Sights

Victoria Memorial
The monument which draws the largest crowds to Kolkata is Victoria Memorial, a fine specimen of Indo-Sarsenic architecture and Kolkata’s most recognisable landmark. It houses an excellent collection of Raj memorabilia including paintings and manuscripts. The foundation stone of this domed structure was laid by the King George V, the then Prince of Wales in 1906. You can relive the history of colonial India during a dramatic sound and light show with the grand structure in the background.

The Indian Museum
The Indian Museum is the largest museum in Asia and the oldest in the Asia - Pacific region (est. 1814 at the location of the Asiatic Society). The Museum shifted to its present sprawling residence in 1875. Situated on Chowringhee Avenue (now J.L. Nehru Road), it houses perhaps the greatest collection of Indian natural history and an Indian Art collection to rival the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum. Of specific note are the meteorite hall and dinosaur hall in the Natural History and Geology section, the numismatics section and the collections of Gandhara Art, Burmese woodwork, Mughal miniatures and Tibetan banner sections in the Indian Art section. The Anthropological Survey of India headquarters and the Government College of Art and Craft are housed in the same building. The Geological Survey of India headquarters moved from the museum to Bidhan Nagar recently. The Indian Museum has a library of excellent historical value, with a special focus on the Raj and Kolkata. It is open on all days except Mondays.

St Paul’s Cathedral
A perfect example of Indo-Gothic architecture, this cathedral is a must-visit during Christmas. The stained glass window is considered to be the best in the country.

Birla Temple
A more recent addition to the city’s pilgrimage points, this temple in south Kolkata attracts all kinds of people, not just pilgrims, through its architectural splendour. Built of marble, this Lord Vishnu temple looks spectacular at night.

Kalighat Temple
This ancient Kali temple is Kolkata’s holiest spot for Hindus and possibly the source of the city’s name. Today’s version, a 1809 rebuild, has floral- and peacock-motif tiles that look more Victorian than Indian. More interesting than the architecture are the jostling pilgrim queues that snake into the main hall to fling hibiscus flowers at a crowned, three-eyed Kali image.

Belur Math
Set very attractively amid palms and manicured lawns, this large religious centre is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission, inspired by 19th-century Indian sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who preached the unity of all religions. Its centrepiece is the 1938 Ramakrishna Mandir which somehow manages to look like a cathedral, Indian palace and Istanbul’s Aya Sofya all at the same time. Several smaller shrines near the Hooghly riverbank include the Sri Sarada Devi Temple , entombing the guru’s wife.

Tagore’s House
Within Rabindra Bharati University, the comfortable 1784 family mansion of Rabindranath Tagore has become a shrine-like museum to India’s greatest modern poet. Even if his personal effects don’t inspire you, some of the well-chosen quotations might spark an interest in Tagore’s deeply universalist philosophy. There’s also a decent gallery of paintings by his family and contemporaries, and an exhibition on his links with Japan. The 1930 photo of Tagore taken with Einstein could win a ‘World’s Wildest Hair’ competition. You’d need an hour to see everything but for many casual visitors a brief glimpse is enough.

Barabazar
Finding the following minor religious sights walks you through some of Kolkata’s most vibrantly chaotic alleys teeming with traders, rickshaw couriers and baggage wallahs with impossibly huge packages balanced on their heads. Hidden away amid the paper-merchants of Old China Bazaar St, the Armenian Church of Nazareth was founded in 1707 and is claimed to be Kolkata’s oldest place of Christian worship. The larger 1797 Portuguese-Catholic Holy Rosary Cathedral has eye-catching crown-topped side towers and an interior whose font is festively kitsch.

Neveh Shalome Synagogue
Kolkata’s Jewish community once numbered around 30,000 but these days barely 40 ageing co-religionists turn up at Moghan David Synagogue . Around the corner, the derelict Neveh Shalome Synagogue is almost invisible behind shop stalls, and opposite decrepit Pollock St Post Office (once a grand Jewish school building) is BethEl Synagogue whose colonnaded interior can only be visited with written permission from Nahoum Bakery . Allow two days!

Botanical Gardens
Founded in 1786, the gardens played an important role in cultivating tea long before the drink became a household commodity. Today there’s a cactus house, palm collection, river-overlook and a boating-lake with splendid Giant Amazon Lily pads. The most touted attraction is the 250-year-old ‘world’s largest banyan tree’. That’s a little misleading: the central trunk rotted away in the 1920s, leaving an array of cross-branches and linked aerial roots so it looks more like a copse than a single tree.

Dakshineswar
The heart of this vibrant riverside complex is a cream-and-red 1847 Kali Temple shaped like an Indian Sacré-Coeur. The site is where Ramakrishna started his remarkable spiritual journey, and his small room in the outer northwest corner of the temple precinct is now a place of special meditative reverence.

Excursions

Shantiniketan (200 km)
Bengal`s revered poet, writer, artist and nationalist Rabindranath Tagore spent a large part of his life at Shantiniketan. The school set up by Tagore in 1901 has developed into the much famed Viswabharati University.

Vishnupur (152 km)
The capital of the Malla kings in the 16th century,Vishnupur has rich historical relics and beautiful terracotta temples. Vishnupur has also gained popularity for its famous terracotta handicraft items and silk.

Murshidabad (219 km)
The City of Murshidabad gained importance at the hands of MurshidKuli Khan. Among numerous interesting monuments the “HazarDuari” Palace or the palace with 1000 doors is most impressive. A grand architectural edifice the palace has now been converted into a museum.

Temperature :
Summer: 41.7-38.1C
Winter: 29.3-9.6 C

Best Time To Visit :
Throughout the year