Travel Guide Kolkata (Calcutta)

After Mumbai, Kolkata is India's third most populous city, with a total population of over 15 million. The greater Kolkata area covers 1,750 km², with 72 towns and around 500 villages; the population of the city itself is "only" 4.5 million. Compared to Mumbai, where order prevails even in the traffic jams, Kolkata is quite different. In terms of traffic, it obeys the law of the strongest, the same law that generally prevails on the country's roads. Buses, streetcars, cabs, cars, hand-powered rickshaws and motorized rickshaws are all engaged in a knife-edge struggle for an acre of asphalt: race or life.For some, ancient Calcutta is a Dantesque city, for others a sewer-city where the dregs of humanity languish, for still others it's the City of Joy, as popularized by Dominique Lapierre when she chose the nickname Calcutta for the title of her bestseller published in 1985. Kolkata is a distortion of Kalikata, meaning the city of Kali, the goddess of Destruction. A city where everything ends and everything begins again. A city of extraordinary vitality that travelers would be well advised to discover once they've become accustomed to India.