Thursday November 24

Today is Sudip's birthday, when I wished him this morning he had forgotten that it was his birthday.

Got a text from Sanjit with the birthday message as well.

The Lodge had our breakfast, consisting of poori & potatoes, toast and eggs and of course coffee. It was ready by 6:30am as we requested, the staff at this place is really helpful and goes out of their way to make the guests happy.

Left the hotel exactly at 7:30 and arrived at the airport around 11:45 am. We went over the Brahmaputra river bridge, it is a beautiful and wide river that i know almost nothing about. The next time i would like to found out more about it and take a cruise on it.

Piroshottam and Nayan called us and just kept saying sorry for all the things that went wrong. Of course the sorry did not make anything right. Our travel agent Compass had hired one sub in Guwahati, Puroshotham and he hired another sub Nayan for Manas. The problem was they were both inexperienced or more bluntly incompetent and would have ruined our stay in Manas had it not been for Bansbari Lodge management that helped change our itinerary and also gave as an experienced guide Umesh for nature walk the first day and for the all day safari the next day.

We got a call from the Compass rep as we were eating lunch and another one from her manager as we were about to enter security. So he is going to have to call us back later tonight. The security check was smooth and the personnel polite. We actually got to use the jetway, a first for me in India, flying a non Air India domestic flight. The flight left about 25 minutes ahead of schedule with a flying time of one hour and is expected to land in Kolkata early as well. The temperature in Kolkata is 30c/86f, that is warm for a November afternoon.

The plane is descending as I am writing this and the landscape is showing many streams and waterways and I am excited at the thought of being in Calcutta.
I couldn't get a satellite fix at all, it would have been nice to follow the path of the flight.

My brother Mithu, came with a Toyota Innova with Naseem as the driver, to pick us up. Naseem with his Innova will be ours for the duration.

We checked into the Guest House and went to spend the evening with my brother and his family. It being Sudip's birthday, Shusmi my niece, got a cake for him and we went to pick up some of his favorite dishes for dinner.

Came back to the guesthouse and retired for the night.