We brave the Calcutta heat, restless electronic eyes and the piercing gazes of museum watchmen to bring you never before seen footage from the inside of the Calcutta Indian Museum - the largest museum in India. Photography is prohibited (unless one pays a small fortune). Capture would have incurred us a forbidding penalty of 150 rupees (5 SGD) . Despite the daunting deterrents, we managed to escape the museum unscathed and now post here two hours worth of stunning pictures that are sure to shock the hairs off you!


Five years older than Singapore, the Indian museum is. It's a Saturday, hence the teeming local crowds which made things trickier for us. But no challenge is unsurmountable for us, the tremendous trio!
Locals pay 5 rupees. Foreigners pay 150 rupees for a nicer looking ticket. Price discrimination at work. Friendly guy at church, John, suggested passing ourselves off as some oriental looking tribe from a corner of India. But we couldn't speak the language so we passed.


In the natural history section of the museum, the shelves are filled with fossils. The elephant like creature is a replica of some ancient elephant ancestor.



Tim intrepidly poses for a picture to give you a sense of the scale of the skeletal structure.
Monster deer with antlers to match. Perfect steed for the Ghost Rider.

Who watches the watchmen? We do! We catch the guard, well, off-guard. Soundly in slumber, he does not see us plunder the secrets of the museum.

When the watchmen were awake, we resorted to numerous stealth tactics. Such as screening the photographer with our bodies, timing our snapshots to their patrol rounds and distraction methods.Apart from natural history, the museum has a section cultural anthropology. It also devotes space to a zoo-like display of various animals. Here, we show you our closest cousins.


and how we came to be from where we were.


Slabs, statues and displays from religious structures of days past were also on display. This is the coldest room in the museum. Count the number of air conditioners. Also observe the level of security for this particular room. Imagine the troubles we went to in shooting guerilla-like photographs.
Gruesome sights. that smell of deformalhyde.


All things considered it was a pretty good museum. There was something for everyone. The architecture and the displays (there was one on geology too) were reminiscent of the British. One senses some of the "white man's burden" of education in the museum. British explorer pride was quite evident in the displays and choice of words. Unfortunately, the best room in the museum was too heavily guarded for us to use our cameras. The 6m by 6m square room was under surveillance by two closed circuit cameras and a watchman. The prize on display? A 4000 year old Eygptian mummy.

A final surreptitiously snapped shot of the museum interior.

We leave you to consider these interesting, ancient and grotesque things at your leisure.