Our Blog

Kolkata has over 3,000 Durga Puja pandals. The question is never which ones are worth visiting — it is which ones you can actually reach, enjoy, and return from without […]

From 15 to 21 October, The Astor Kolkata is serving a heritage Bengali buffet for Durga Puja. The hotel is a heritage hotel near Park Street, on Shakespeare Sarani. This […]

Some hotels call themselves heritage. The Astor Kolkata simply is one. Built in 1905 on Shakespeare Sarani — the cultural spine of Park Street — The Astor has witnessed 120 […]

The scent of shiuli flowers drifts through the lanes, the dhaak drums echo like a heartbeat, and every neighbourhood transforms into an open-air gallery. Durga Puja in Kolkata isn’t just […]

Every year around this time, I get asked some version of the same question: when exactly is Durga Puja this year, and what actually happens on each day? The dates […]

Kolkata has several distinct hotel districts, and they’re genuinely not interchangeable. Chowringhee, BBD Bagh, Salt Lake, and Park Street each developed around a different part of the city’s history and […]

Nobody books a hotel for just one reason. Some come for the heritage architecture, some for a wedding, some because a hospital appointment is three doors down the road. The […]

Park Street is Kolkata’s most central, most historic, and most walkable base for visitors — home to the city’s best-known restaurants, nightlife, and several of its most respected heritage and […]

Kolkata’s most famous heritage names — The Oberoi Grand, The Lalit Great Eastern, Elgin Fairlawn — are all genuinely historic, but none of them sit in the Park Street area […]

There are five days every October when Kolkata stops being a city and becomes something else entirely. The streets belong to the dhakis. The night belongs to the pandals. And […]