Kolkata, West Bengal, India

India can both charm you and repulse you at the same time - but it is especially good at the latter. From the airport, we took a surreal late-night taxi ride to the centre: an old, decripid cab, a suicidal driver, a near collision with a huge dump truck and deserted streets save for the road crews boiling barrels of smoking tar. Kolkata is a sprawling city, full of shops, markets, offices, street vendors, food stalls, rickshaws and thick traffic. It is dingy and poor, full of garbage and squalor. It is hard working and heartbreaking but it is not the hell that many imagine. The city got a bad rap early on: “the black hole of Calcutta” refers to a 1756 rebellion. In 1971, a mass influx of Bangladeshi refugees and their disastrous starvation made headlines. Mother Theresa helped many here but she also heightened the city’s stigma. An amazing woman, her death in 1997 passed largely unnoticed as it coincided with Princess Diana’s funeral.