Crowds, safety and getting separated

Kolkata Police plan the five days in detail: one-way walking routes around major pujas, barricaded queue channels, road closures, watchtowers and a very large deployment on the ground. It works better than the numbers suggest it should.

The practical consequence for you: once you are in a channel you follow it to the end. Trying to reverse against a one-way flow is both futile and genuinely dangerous, and the officers will not let you.

Keep your feet under you and move with the flow rather than across it. Do not stop in a moving crowd to take a photograph — step out of the flow first. Keep children on the inside, holding a hand or a bag strap, not on your shoulders in a crush.

If a crowd becomes uncomfortably dense — you can feel pressure rather than just contact — move diagonally toward the edge, taking the openings as they come. Do not push directly against it and do not sit down.

If you feel unwell, tell the nearest volunteer or officer immediately. There are first aid points near the major pujas and they are staffed.

Agree a fixed meeting point before you enter any pandal — a specific named thing, not 'the entrance', because there are four. Agree a fallback time as well: back here at ten, whatever happens.

The network is often the first casualty of a big crowd. Do not rely on being able to call. Police assistance booths are set up across the pandal areas during the five days and are the right place to go for a lost child.

Phone in a front pocket or a zipped bag. Kolkata during Pujo is a safe city with a cheerful crowd, and pickpocketing in slow-moving queues is the one common problem.

Women travelling alone will generally find Pujo crowds fine and heavily policed; the ordinary precautions about lanes you do not know, late at night, still apply.