Metropolis · West Bengal

Kolkata travel guide & tour packages

Kolkata is the most literary and least self-conscious of the Indian metros, and the one where walking is actually rewarded. The colonial core around Dalhousie Square, the Victoria Memorial, the flower market beneath Howrah Bridge at dawn, the trams that still run, the coffee house on College Street — none of it is packaged, which is why people who love the city love it disproportionately. Kumartuli, where the Durga idols are sculpted from river clay, is at its most extraordinary in the weeks before Durga Puja in September or October, when the whole city becomes an open-air exhibition. Two nights minimum; three if you visit during Puja, when everything else stops.