Top 10 Things to Do in Kolkata | The City Is the Sight
Kolkata has no Taj Mahal and it is our favourite city in India. This list is mostly rooms, streets and arguments rather than monuments, which is exactly why it is worth your time.
No monument, and that is the point
Kolkata has no Taj Mahal, no Amber Fort, no thing to photograph and tick.
It is our favourite city in India, and our Kolkata travel guide is honest that we send fewer clients here than almost anywhere.
What there is instead is a place: two hundred years of colonial architecture decaying spectacularly, a genuine literary and political culture, the country's last trams, the best street food in India, and a population that will argue with you about football, fish and Tagore with equal seriousness and equal warmth.
So this list is mostly rooms, streets and arguments. If you travel to see sights, go to Rajasthan. If you travel to be somewhere, read on. Ask us about Kolkata fares.
The ten
1. Kumartuli, any morning
The closest thing here to a must-see and it is a workshop rather than an attraction.
The potters' quarter, where the idols for the festivals are made from Ganges clay by hundreds of sculptors working in open lanes. Armatures of straw and bamboo, clay pressed on by hand, and gods emerging in rows.
You can walk through it any day of the year. It is free. Almost no visitor goes.
2. The Indian Coffee House
A high-ceilinged, ceiling-fanned, thoroughly shabby room near the university, where generations of students, writers, film-makers and revolutionaries have argued over one cup for three hours.
The coffee is not good. The service is a shrug. There is a famous Bengali song about it and everybody's uncle has a story about it.
Sit for an hour, order the coffee, expect nothing from it, and understand that the room and the noise in it are the point. This is Kolkata's version of a monument.
3. A ride on the last trams in India
Kolkata runs the only tram network left in India, and one of the oldest still operating anywhere in Asia.
Be honest about what it is now: much diminished, slow, and its future has been under debate for a long time. Whole lines have gone.
Ride one anyway. It costs nothing and it is a rolling museum. Check locally what is actually running rather than trusting any route map online, including ours.
4. Puchka, standing on a footpath
What the rest of India calls pani puri, and the Kolkata version is fiercer: more tamarind, more chilli, and served by a man who will keep handing them to you until you physically stop him.
Doing exactly that, on a footpath, is one of the great pleasures available in this country. Compare Kolkata food walks on Viator.
5. A kathi roll, where they were invented
A paratha, egg-fried, wrapped around kebab meat, onion and a squeeze of lime.
Kolkata invented it and every other Indian city sells a worse version. That is not local pride, it is simply true.
6. North Kolkata on foot
The old city and the best walking in India.
Narrow lanes, crumbling mansions with courtyards still in use, family houses subdivided over generations, and hand-pulled rickshaws, which still exist here and nowhere else and which raise complicated feelings that are worth having rather than avoiding.
7. College Street
A street of nothing but bookshops. Kilometres of them, stacked on the footpath, and it is the largest second-hand book market in the world by most accounts.
The Coffee House is halfway down it, which is not a coincidence.
8. Howrah Bridge, from the water
It carries an extraordinary volume of people daily and it is best seen from a ferry at dusk rather than a taxi crossing it.
Take the boat. It costs a rounding error.
9. Fish, taken seriously
Bengal is a river delta and Bengalis regard fish with a seriousness other Indians find funny and which is entirely justified.
Ilish, the hilsa, is the obsession: full of bones, worth the effort, and its short season is a matter of genuine public feeling. Bhetki in a mustard sauce is the safer introduction. Find Kolkata experiences on Klook.
10. Mishti, daily
The sweets are a requirement rather than a treat.
Rosogolla and sandesh are the famous ones, both made from fresh cheese, both far less sugary than north Indian sweets. Bengal and Odisha have argued about who invented the rosogolla for a very long time and they are not going to stop.
Durga Puja is the reason to plan a trip
If your dates have any flexibility, aim at this.
For several days, usually in September or October, Bengal stops. Neighbourhoods across Kolkata commission pandals, and "temporary structure" understates it enormously: these are enormous, artist-designed, thematically ambitious buildings, some architecturally serious, each housing an idol of the goddess Durga. There might be thousands across the city.
And then everybody walks. All night, for days, between pandals, in crowds, eating, judging, comparing, with the whole city functioning as an open-air art competition.
It is on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list, which is unusual for a festival, and it earns it.
The practical notes are serious: hotels book out months ahead, prices rise sharply, the crowds are genuinely enormous, and moving around takes many times longer than normal. The dates move with the lunar calendar, which catches out anyone planning by fixed months.
It is completely worth it. Our Brisbane to Kolkata page explains why four to six months of lead time is the whole strategy.
Eastern India's doorway
The other thing almost nobody does.
Darjeeling via Bagdogra. The Sundarbans mangroves and their tigers. Varanasi a short flight west. And the northeast, an entirely different India, with Assam, Meghalaya and Sikkim's gateways all radiating from here.
Almost no Australian does that trip, which is precisely the argument for doing it. Ticket the domestic legs with your international journey so the connections are protected.
The seasons
November to February is genuinely lovely: mild, dry and walkable, which is not a sentence you can write about many Indian cities.
March to May is hot and humid, and Kolkata sits at sea level on a delta, so the humidity is the real story rather than the temperature.
June to September is monsoon, and in a delta city that means water in quantity.
Booking notes
Prices shown by our partners are live and in your choice of currency, most activities confirm instantly, and free cancellation windows are stated on each listing. Almost nothing here needs advance booking: the Coffee House, the trams, Kumartuli, College Street and the footpath food are all simply there, which is one more thing to like about this city.
A guided food walk is the exception worth arranging, because Bengali food is not well understood outside Bengal and a couple of hours with someone who can explain what you are eating changes the rest of the trip.
Our flights to India page covers the corridor and the festival calendar. Get a free Kolkata quote.