Winter Bucket List: 13 You Must Do When You Are In Kolkata

More popularly known as the Park Street Carnival, this fortnight-long bonanza happens every December on Park Street and is open to all. The entire road is decked out with lights and Christmas décor (there’s even a giant Christmas Tree just outside Allen Park on the Camac Street crossing) and some of the city’s best musicians and bands belt out tunes right through the evening.

Photo ops are boundless as are the stalls where you can pick up everything from momos and soup to brownies and hot chocolate. Some of the stalls lining the street are run by small entrepreneurs or home-run business but they have the best food that you don’t get commercially (think pantras and boozy Christmas cake).

Fascinated with vintage cars? You can’t miss The Statesman Vintage and Classic Car Rally that happens on a Sunday in early January. The city’s oldest and grandest cars are put on display — who knew the city folks had so many hidden away in their garages? You can pick a scenic spot on the road {you’ll find the rally route online} and watch the cars whizz by.

For a closer look, you can get passes to the end location where the cars stop and wait for the results to be announced. Some of the riders in the car even dress up in old-fashioned clothing (think sun hats and gloves) to set the mood!

How many of you know that Kolkata hosts an open-air street party open to all? So Goa!

The Barracks hosts a couple of days-long festival with activities for every age group – sporting events, food stalls, dances and more. On one of the evenings close to Christmas, they have an open party with the city’s best performers singing their hearts out on a make-shift stage on the road. The party is open to all and goes on till the wee hours in the morning –  it’s BYOB! Keep an eye on our page — we will be telling you more about this soon.

Love dogs but don’t have one of your own? The dog show is where you can go to ogle at the little (and big!) puppers. The Calcutta Kennel Club has its annual dog show in winter every year. It’s spread over a couple of weekends, with days and times allotted to different dog breeds. Yo can find the schedule online.

The entrance to the show is minimal (around INR 20) and you can spend as long as you want ogling at the dogs as they parade around with their owners. You can also walk around the enclosures where the dogs sit with their owners between shows.

New Market becomes a glorious place for festivities in winter. You can spend hours just wandering around without worrying about drowning in a pool of your own sweat. The centre gets converted into a kind of a Christmas Wonderland where you can pick up all sorts of Xmas décor from trees to baubles and table decorations.

Nahoums also sells their classic Christmas cakes. Although the quality may not be the same as it once was, grab a pound of cake for tradition’s sake.

Bake sales, carnivals, fetes and fairs, Kolkata has no shortage of activities through the winter months. The Calcutta Club Bakery Carnival is one of the city’s iconic fairs as are the ones hosted by schools and churches. Keep a look out on this space for more.

Open-air concerts are also big. Live music, choir performaces, carol singing and Christmas plays happen through December.  Sometime in January, we will witness the amazing Lion Dance and gorge on baos and momos at the Chinese New Year Festival.

The Jaipur one may be the prima donna, but Kolkata is fast catching up with a series of lit events. There’s no faster route into a literary culture of a city than through its literature fests. Kolkata’s year begins with the Apeejay Lit Fest in the laid-back winter of January with events and workshops like photo-walks. Kolkata Lit Meet which follows soon after, has a spectacular backdrop of the Victoria Memorial. Then there is the Kolkata Boi Mela (or the Book Fair) that takes place in February.

Clubs, cafes, open-air auditoriums have now opened their doors to live music gigs. Jazz is back on Park Street – cafes and restaurants like Mocha, Ta’am, Paris Café and Cafela are putting the mojo back into the music scene. Then there’s Jamsteady’s evenings at the Princeton Club. A live music property, Jamsteady has been a lifeline for Kolkata’s indie music scene. They hold a Big Sunday festival where you get a taste of a drive-out music fest.

ICCR will host their international classical guitar festival, the streets of Dover Lane will see an open-air Indian classical music fest (performances begin late in the evening and go on all night long till the next morning). This year, the jazz fest will be in early December so keep your eyes and ears open. And then you have live music in the middle of the beautiful Lakes every weekend.

The Boi Mela is everyone’s go-to place for picking up books that wouldn’t be available elsewhere. But it is also a place for an all-day picnic! Kolkata peeps love to gorge on fish fries, and cutlets, pick up some art and get their portraits done at pop-up portrait gallery.

Everyone knows nolen gur is bae for Bengalis. This special jaggery comes only during the winter months and we are looking forward to gorging on sandesh made with nolen gur, And dribbling it over everything like toast and porridge.

This is perfect weather for hanging out at the Lakes — watching the birds, listening to live music or watching offbeat films over weekend evenings, cheering on the young rowers at the annual boat race {just like Oxford-Cambride in old England!} or just mulling over life while munching on peanuts on a bench.

The Maidan is where people will be headed now — with picnic baskets and roll-up rugs to sit on. Watch the Kolkata Mounted Police train their horses, cricket and football matches, and of course the annual kite festival.

This is the best time to walk around, explore the city. Now that the temperature’s pleasant and there’s zero sweating, take off from time to time with bae, BFFs or your squad and get to know all the nooks and crannies of the city. Use LBB as a guide of what and where to explore. Or pick up a great book like A Jaywalker’s Guide to Calcutta by Soumitra Das (Oxford bookstore has copies). Sign up with a themed walk (pick from cemetery walks, cultural and food walks) with a city outfit. Check our recommendations here.