By the Mighty Hooghly

Dakshineswar Kali Temple, Kolkata, India


The Hooghly River, view from the Dakshineswar Ganga Ghat on the east bank of the Hooghly

Happy Durga Puja!!! Anu’s biggest festival is upon us (although there’s really not much of a celebration here in Dubai), and I’ve saved some pictures just for this occasion, haha! So it’s gonna be another picture post. (And that’ll be the case till the shit at work clears up, sigh).

Welcome to Kolkata, the capital of Durga Puja celebrations!




Sri Ramakrishna Belur Math Temple, Kolkata


Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Math, Kolkata


The Belur Math Ghat on the west bank of the Hooghly River


Jayden with Papa at Dakshineswar Temple, Kolkata, Apr 2017




Howrah Bridge, at the centre of Kolkata


Mullick Ghat Flower Market near the busy Howrah Bridge


Kolkata International Airport


Salt Lake, Kolkata – Salt Lake is where we usually stay on our stopovers in Kolkata. Kolkata is where we do our banking stuff (coz HSBC and StanChart are too high and mighty to set up base on our humble home city of Silchar). This picture was taken from the roof of the Columbia Asia Hospital. (Kolkata is incidentally also the place I stop to do medical check-ups!)

By the way, we just celebrated Jayden’s 4th birthday. But the pictures will have to wait. As usual. See ya!

Making Coffee from Animal Poop

Continuing with Bali, and considering the amount of shit I am getting from the new ‘bosses’ assigned to me in this bloody project, I’m putting a blog post on some animal poop coffee.

Kopi Luwak (or Civet Coffee) is a famous coffee found in Indonesia. I’ve heard of Kopi Luwak for a long time but have never tried it. Heck, I thought it was some kind of a myth, or an urban legend, because who’d believe that you can make coffee out of some cat shit?!?! But Kopi Luwak is exactly that! It is made from partly fermented coffee beans collected from the faeces / poop of the Asian palm civet who eats coffee cherries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So, it ain't a cat after all (whew, ...know how bad cat shit smells?) Now who was it that told me it was from a friggin jungle cat???

The civet's poop are collected to retrieve the undigested coffee beans (which are actually the seeds of the coffee cherries). They then clean it, fry it and heck, do whatever they do, to make coffee beans drinkable. Then they sell it as the most expensive coffee in the friggin world! That’s the story of Kopi Luwak, and here’re the photos of yours truly finally trying a cup o’ cat shit coffee. Enjoy!


Kopi Luwak, fancy a cup?


Enjoying a cuppa


Coffee, no TEA flavours of all varieties (what's tea doing in a coffee shop?)


Preparing some coffee tea


No, these are not coffee cherries, they're cocoa beans, for making chocolate. Why is it here? Beats me. But they look nice, and green, ain't it?




Tegal Sari Luwak Coffee, on the road between Mengwi and Bedugul, Bali, Indonesia


Frying some coffee beans


The source of all that fuss, the Asian palm civet.