I’ve made my travel arrangements and half of my hotel arrangements, and now I’m looking for advice.

I’ll be in Calcutta from November 4th to November 11th, with free time from the 8th to the 10th. Just three days, which seems far too short--but since I’ll be on vacation the week before, at the show the entire following week, and not getting home until November 12th, it bugs me a bit to extend the trip any longer than that. Two and a half weeks out of the office is more than enough to let incredible piles of email, phone messages, mail, and partially completed projects pile up, don’t you think?

Which leads us to my questions:

Question 1: Any suggestions on things to do and see in such a short time around Calcutta. Taj Mahal is on the other side of the country (sort of), so it doesn’t count.

Question 2: Any suggestions on a decent, but budget priced, digital camera to take with me? I will be covering the event for one of the magazines that we publish, so it has to take pictures good enough to use with the story. Clarity, color, sharpness, lack of noise, and speed are what I’m looking for. Megapixels doesn’t matter as much as quality.

Question 3: Along the same lines, I’m considering getting a cheap--really cheap--laptop for the trip. It needs to be good enough and reliable enough to store the photos as I go, my notes from the show, and the article that I write on my way back. It would be best if it had wireless and wired network connections--although I won’t bother with a dial-up service. I don’t care about operating system and would, at least to some small extent, prefer to get one with a newer Linux distribution instead of Windows. Not because of any opposition to Windows, but because it would be as fun to play with after the trip is over.

Simply, I don’t want to take my own laptop. It’s too expensive to replace.

Any ideas?