We spent a couple of days in Calcutta, another crowded city. We stayed downtown, and were able to walk all over the place. One day we took a taxi to a few other major tourist spots.

We stayed at a delightful quirky old hotel called the Fairlawn. If you're ever staying in Calcutta I highly recommend it. All the lobby and sitting room walls are just covered with memorabilia, and it's very cute just generally.

The sitting room of the Fairlawn.

The Victoria Memorial, a tired old museum.

Tourists in back of the Victoria Memorial.

Challenging commonly held beliefs.

Does this sign mean that shooting guns is OK?

"Well, this is an interesting incident, Brian," said one radio commentator to another. "I don't think there have been any mysterious materializations on the pitch since, oh, since, well, I don't think there have been any, have there? That I recall?" "Edgbaston 1932?"

The park is a good place to wash your pony.

We went on a whirlwind tour of Calcutta tourist spots, including two Jain temples, the house of the poet Rabinadrath Tagore, and the Marble Palace, a mansion with lots of old sculpture and furniture. Here's an incredibly ornate Jain Temple.

Jains at the temple.

The Jains are very pro-life, being incredibly careful not even to step on insects. Here a crow sits on the ceramic and glass mosaic.

A ceiling outside the temple.

The garden in front of the temple.

Columns holding up a railing, collected from all over the world.

Outside the Jain temples, I took a movie on my camera of a man squeezing sugar cane. Here I'm showing the movie to the people on the street. The man in the blue turban is our taxi driver and guide for the day.

We went into a large cathedral.

There were many memorials to brave soldiers who died in the process of securing India as part of the British Empire.

Here was the church's Nativity scene. It was quite delightful spending December in India and Thailand, where the reminders of Christmas were actually pretty infrequent.

Apparently Santa Claus has white skin (it's a mask, not just a beard). I had no idea.

On to Thailand: Bangkok