Durga Puja: how to actually experience the city's biggest week

Durga Puja is not a festival Kolkata hosts. For five days it is the city, and everything else — traffic, business hours, where anyone is — reorganises around it.

The structure is worth knowing. The main days run from Shashthi through to Dashami, with the crowds building each evening and peaking on Ashtami and Nabami. The pandals — temporary structures housing the idols, many of them genuinely ambitious pieces of design — are open through the night, and the pandal-hopping is done between about 9pm and 4am, when the heat drops and the streets belong to pedestrians.

The practical advice is all about movement. Do not drive; large parts of central Kolkata become pedestrian-only and the rest is gridlocked. The metro runs extended hours during Puja and is by far the fastest way between neighbourhoods. Pick one area per night — north Kolkata one evening, south another — rather than trying to cross the city between pandals.

Go early in the week if you want to see the artistry and late if you want the crowd. Many of the biggest pandals open to visitors before the official start, and the days before Shashthi are when photographers get their pictures.

Eating is easy: every neighbourhood puts out food stalls, and the eating is part of the ritual rather than an afterthought.

Dates move each year with the lunar calendar. Confirm this year's before booking anything — Kolkata's hotels sell out for Puja week months in advance.