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Kolkata Travel Guide: What to See, Durga Puja, Getting Around and Flights

Kolkata (Calcutta) is in West Bengal. The Ministry of Tourism's Incredible India site calls it "the cultural capital of India" and "the City of Joy", and names the Howrah Bridge, the Victoria Memorial, the Maidan and Park Street among its sights. Durga Puja, which UNESCO places in September or October, and the Sundarban Tiger Reserve, whose own site names Kolkata as the nearest major city, are covered below.

What to see in Kolkata

Victoria Memorial Hall

Victoria Memorial Hall's website (updated October 2026) gives the museum galleries' hours as 10am to 6pm. The galleries close on Mondays and on these national holidays: Republic Day, Holi (Dol Yatra), Id-ul-Fitr, Independence Day, Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday, Dussehra (Vijay Dashami) and Christmas Day. Ticket counters close half an hour before the galleries do.

The gardens are open every day from 6am to 6pm, but a garden ticket does not cover entry to the museum building. Gallery tickets are priced by nationality, and the memorial lists groups who enter free, among them school students up to Class XII in uniform with their school identity card. A light and sound show is listed too, on a schedule the memorial says can change at the last minute and with the weather.

The memorial's rules bar bags, food and flash photography, and it is a no-drone and plastic-free zone. It lists a cloak room, a canteen, a museum shop and wheelchairs.

Indian Museum

The Indian Museum is on the Ministry of Tourism's list of Kolkata's sights. Check the museum's own visitor information page before you plan a visit around it.

Howrah Bridge, the Hooghly and Park Street

Incredible India names the Howrah Bridge over the Hooghly River and suggests a boat ride on the river. It also names the grounds of the Maidan, and calls Park Street the centre of the city's food and nightlife.

Tagore's house, College Street and Kumartuli

Jorasanko Thakur Bari, the ancestral home of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, is now a museum on his life and works, according to Incredible India. On College Street, the Indian Coffee House was established in 1876, and the site describes it as a gathering place for intellectuals, artists and students. In Kumartuli, the potters' quarter, artisans make clay idols for festivals.

More places on the Ministry of Tourism's list

Other places on Incredible India's list of Kolkata attractions include these.

  • Belur Math
  • Dakshineswar Kali Temple
  • Parasnath Jain Temple
  • St. Paul's Cathedral and St. Andrew's Church
  • Mother House
  • Acharya Jagdish Bose Indian Botanical Garden
  • Alipore Zoological Garden
  • Science City
  • Eden Gardens
  • Prinsep Ghat and Outram Ghat
  • Netaji Bhawan
  • National Library
  • Shaheed Minar
  • Writers Building and the General Post Office
  • Kolkata Chinatown and Bow Barracks
  • Vidyasagar Setu

Durga Puja in Kolkata

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added Durga Puja in Kolkata to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021. UNESCO describes an annual festival in September or October, marked by the ten-day worship of the Hindu mother-goddess Durga, large installations and pavilions, and traditional Bengali drumming. Incredible India's West Bengal festival page says the festival lasts five days (Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami and Dashami), during the Hindu month of Ashwin.

According to UNESCO, small workshops sculpt images of Durga and her family from unfired clay taken from the Ganga River, and the images are immersed in the river on the tenth day. Incredible India describes "theme pujas" in temporary pandals (pavilions). The dates move each year, so check the year's dates on Incredible India's festival page before you book.

When to visit Kolkata

A guest post by a Kolkata local on Incredible India's site recommends the end of September until March. It says the city is humid except in the winter months, and that summer, from April until September, may not be comfortable for sightseeing.

UNESCO places Durga Puja in September or October and describes crowds of spectators walking around to see its installations. The Victoria Memorial's galleries close on Mondays and on national holidays including Dussehra (Vijay Dashami) and Christmas Day.

Flying to and from Kolkata

Kolkata's airport is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport (CCU), owned and run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). The Kolkata Metro's Yellow Line serves it at Jai Hind (Bimanbandar) station. Terminals, taxis, buses, facilities and the full list of routes are on the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport page.

Main routes from Kolkata

The main direct routes recorded from Kolkata go to Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. Others go to Pune, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Goa (Dabolim) and Srinagar. The airlines recorded on these routes are IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, SpiceJet and Akasa Air.

Entry permits for some destinations

Some places with direct flights recorded from Kolkata have entry permit rules. The Bureau of Immigration (BoI) lists the whole of Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland among the areas where foreign nationals need a Restricted or Protected Area Permit, and the e-Visa is not valid for those areas. Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland also each run an Inner Line Permit for Indian citizens, so check the state's own rules on who needs one before you book Imphal, Aizawl or Dimapur.

For Sri Vijaya Puram (formerly Port Blair), the BoI's list and the Andaman and Nicobar Administration's own notice differ on which islands foreign nationals need a permit for, so check with the Administration before you book.

Getting around Kolkata

A guest post on Incredible India's site lists buses, trams, yellow taxis, radio cabs, local trains, the metro and ferries as ways to get around Kolkata.

Kolkata Metro

The Ministry of Railways, in a PIB Kolkata release of 14 March 2024, names the metro's lines by colour, among them the Green, Blue, Orange and Purple lines. The release announced that the Green Line would start running under the Hooghly River between Howrah Maidan and Esplanade, calling it "the first time in the country" that the metro would run under the river. The stations on that stretch are Howrah Maidan, Howrah, Mahakaran and Esplanade, and the ministry described Howrah as one of the deepest metro stations in the country.

Check current service days and hours with Metro Railway, Kolkata before you rely on the metro.

Trams

The Calcutta Tramways Company operates Kolkata's tram services, according to its own undated website, whose header reads West Bengal Transport Corporation Limited (Erstwhile The Calcutta Tramways company (1978) Ltd.), a Government of West Bengal undertaking. The site describes heritage rides on special tram cars named Banalata and Balaka on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, and an air-conditioned tram for joy rides that can be booked up to 6 days ahead. Check with the operator which routes and rides are running before you plan around a tram.

Reaching Kolkata by train

The Sundarban Tiger Reserve's site names Sealdah and Howrah as the stations for reaching Kolkata by train. On 17 January 2026 the Prime Minister flagged off India's first Vande Bharat Sleeper train, between Howrah and Guwahati (Kamakhya), according to the Government of India's Press Information Bureau. The Guwahati guide covers the other end.

Further afield: the Sundarbans and Santiniketan

Sundarban Tiger Reserve

UNESCO inscribed Sundarbans National Park on its World Heritage List in 1987. It describes the Sundarbans as land and water in the Ganges delta, more than half of it in India and the rest in Bangladesh, containing the world's largest area of mangrove forests.

The Sundarban Tiger Reserve's own site names Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport as the nearest airport and Canning as the nearest railway station, with EMU trains to Canning from Sealdah. The site also says buses to Sonakhali and Godkhali are available from Esplanade in Kolkata, that boats board at Godkhali and Dhamakhali, and that the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation organises guided tours from Kolkata.

The site says the only way to get around inside the reserve is by boat or launch, and that entry is only on booked, registered boats, each with an ecotourism guide. Entry is charged for boats and for visitors, and the reserve's site sets out what visitors need to arrange, so read it before you book.

Santiniketan

UNESCO describes Santiniketan, in rural West Bengal, as established in 1901 by Rabindranath Tagore as a residential school and centre for art.

More travel guides

Darjeeling is covered in the Siliguri and Darjeeling guide. The India travel guide covers the country as a whole.

These cities with direct flights recorded from Kolkata have their own guides:

Questions about Kolkata

Which airport do flights to Kolkata use?

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, run by the AAI. The Kolkata Metro's Yellow Line serves it at Jai Hind (Bimanbandar) station.

Is the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata open on Mondays?

The galleries close on Mondays and on the national holidays the memorial lists, Dussehra (Vijay Dashami) and Christmas Day among them. The gardens are open every day from 6am to 6pm, but a garden ticket does not cover the museum building.

When is Durga Puja in Kolkata?

UNESCO describes it as a festival in September or October, and Incredible India says it usually falls in September or October, in the Hindu month of Ashwin. The dates move each year, so check them before you book.

How do I get from Kolkata to the Sundarbans?

The Sundarban Tiger Reserve's site names EMU trains from Sealdah to Canning, says buses to Sonakhali and Godkhali are available from Esplanade, and lists guided tours from Kolkata organised by the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation. Inside the reserve, entry is only on booked, registered boats with an ecotourism guide.

How many days should I spend in Kolkata?

A guest post on Incredible India's site suggests at least 3 or 4 days for sightseeing in Kolkata.

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