Durga Puja season is the time to travel. Travelling, as any seasoned Bengali traveller will tell you, is all about the planning. Long before travel review sites, we had “Bhromonsangee” (Travel Companion), the classic tome for all travel information. This book was typically found covered in newspaper to hide the cover image of a couple in a maithuna pose, most probably a Khajuraho sculpture, too risqué for the bookshelves of middle-class families, at a time we were told babies came from eating magical rosogollas.

The Bengali traveller typically doesn’t care much about hotel stars, when all you want is a place to lay your head. The only thing that we may splurge on is a tour package from a travel agency, with pick-ups at stations and their own luxury deluxe bus, because it takes the real stress out of the vacation: the coordination. Any travel agency that values Bengali business knows it’s okay to miss a stop or two or miss a connecting train, as long as you give the customer a few more minutes in the toilet, because no Bengali wants to travel on an uneasily full stomach, especially one that belongs to a community which just like the native Alaskan has 50 words for ice, has 50 words for the consistency of stool.

We like to pack for travel as if we were going to withstand the Siege of Leningrad. After serial killers, the biggest market for monkey caps is the Bengali, since it is considered the best of line of protection against cold during travels, where the “season is always changing”, and our immune systems cannot resist the common cold and Communism. Our hold-alls are full of indigestion and fever reducing tablets, mosquito repellent cream, a bottle of cough syrup in a plastic packet to prevent leakage.

Water is usually the source of stomach infection and if there is anything the Bengali dreads more than the prospect of Sanjay Leela Bhansali remaking Charulata, it is stomach ache and that is why a bottle of chemical water purifier is a must. No Bengali traveller trusts the supplies of a hotel, which is why a gamcha-towel must be packed as well as mustard oil for body and coconut oil for hair and a personal brand of toothpaste, and oh yes Boroline, which we are told can cure anything from chapped skin to being charred by a dragon’s breath. Apart from medicine food must always be present, fruits especially, apples and bananas, and a knife to cut them with, and a flask filled with hot tea for the hydration of vocal chords.

So travel well my friends, but pack even better.