day 78, at sea, on the way to Dubai, writeup and pictures of Cochin, India

We have been working on this blog since about 5:30 a.m. It is now 10:30 AM. We have gained a new appreciation for Katie's writing stamina! I think that mom's write-ups have been outstanding and hope you agree. I do think that this particular write up characterizes our entire world cruise.

Hi everybody,

Today we are in Cochin, India. We were not sure we were going to go on the tour as it is very hot and humid and the description of the tour said the buses might not be air-conditioned! We were pleasantly surprised that our bus was air-conditioned and I am so glad we didn't chicken out because we had a fascinating day. It took about an hour to drive through the city, into the suburbs and then the countryside. The city was interesting and much more prosperous looking than some of the other countries we have visited. Obviously they don't have any zoning laws because there would be several really nice houses-not quite mansions but really nice and then there would be a row of market type buildings. I haven't looked at the pictures yet but I hope I got some of the people because their clothes were very interesting. Every single woman I saw was wearing a sari-some of them absolutely gorgeous. In the city about one half of the men wore Western-style trousers and the other half wore a western shirt but on their lower half they wore this long piece of cloth. Some of them left it long-write to their ankles like a woman's skirt and some of them folded it in half so it came to their knees (like shorts) and then pulled the back through their legs and tucked it in at the waist. In the countryside all the man dressed this way. I realized I had seen this manner of dressing in the movie, "Gunga Din" but I think I thought only very poor people (almost slaves) wore them a long time ago. All the children I saw wore Western clothes.

The province of Karala is 60% Hindu, 20% Moslem, and 20% Christian. I was heartened to see trucks and buses with the big signs on them saying, "Power of prayer", and "praise the Lord". Also hospitals and schools had Christian names. We saw several Christian churches-they looked quite different than churches in America-sort of like a Hindu temple except it had a cross on the top and had a Christian saint's name. The bus was going too fast for me to get any pictures.

The first stop we made was to see ladies weaving cloth. There were about 10 women each working a wooden weaving apparatus. It was very noisy and I thought it would not be pleasant to work all day in that environment. The cotton cloth they will look like something you would cover patio furniture with or make curtains out of-very pretty stripes and checks but not something you would make clothing out of. The weave was quite loose. These women make very little money. We did not go to any stores so I don't have any idea what the cost of living is. We also saw a blacksmith at this shop-at least dad did and got a picture. I was more interested in getting back on the air-conditioned bus!

Although our guide spoke English (I guess he would have to, eh?) He had such a heavy accent I couldn't understand a word. There were lots of questions I would have liked to ask him but there really wasn't any point because I would not have understood his answers. At the end of the tour he gave us the written page summarizing what he had talked about so that was helpful.

Our next stop was a Hindu temple but we decided to stay on the cool bus as we are somewhat "Templed out". Actually this was quite interesting as we were parked beside an area that had cement walls around it-an area of about 1 acre-that was full of water. This may have been part of the Temple complex. Anyway we watched one man washing his clothes and another man taking a bath! I wonder how clean his clothes got! It kind of reminded me of the Roman baths in Bath, England.

Our next stop was the most interesting to me but I am a bit frustrated because we were not given an explanation of what we were going to do and we missed out on some of it although we had our own personal experience which is often more meaningful.

First, we boarded some primitive looking boats. Hope we do have pictures of them. I must be getting a little jaded because I wondered if they were provided by the tour company and made commercially in China. Once we got to the village we did see two men in a dugout canoe that looked more authentic. This tour was described as visiting a village on a backwater. I imagined some body of water about 30 feet wide overhung with jungle type vegetation. Instead it was more like a lake although it couldn't have been too deep because we were poled across. It was very peaceful and if you shut your eyes so you didn't see the huge concrete bridge-a little distance away-you could imagine you were in a timeless country village.

Once we got to the other side we alighted via a very wobbly board and were given our "snack pack"-very nicely made bags made out of newspaper and containing two chocolate bars, a bag of potato chips, a package of chocolate chip cookies, and a boxed fruit drink. The man who handed these out to me pointed out proudly that the bags were made out of their local newspaper. I couldn't really appreciate this because of course it was written in Malayalam-the native language. After we all sat around enjoying our snacks we were supposed to go behind some houses to see a woman making coir rope and a man making pottery. Dad and I (after asking permission) chose to move away from the group and enjoy a smoke in the shade of a mango tree. While we were there two young girls shyly approached us and we got involved in conversation with them. They were learning English in school but were not too proficient yet so it was a bit difficult but fun. They asked us if we had a pen and paper and we exchanged names and addresses (I must send them some postcards from the US and Canada). We were so engrossed in this that when I looked up and saw all the people on the tour had disappeared I thought they had returned to the boat and we were holding up the whole tour. This is a big no-no on these tours.

We dashed back to the boat which was moored out of sight only to find just one other couple there. They are from Kentucky and we chatted with them for what was beginning to seem quite a long time for the rest of the tour to return. Imagine our surprise when the boat driver, who of course spoke no English jumped in the boat and took off! I couldn't believe he was going to leave 35 people stranded in this village. What we didn't realize was that we were on an island and the others, after seeing the rope and pottery stuff, were walking through the rest of the village to the other side of the island where we then picked them up! I hope you get a good laugh out of this.

I am disappointed I didn't get to do this because I found the village very interesting but if we had, of course, we would not have had our conversation with the girls and also with two man who showed us how they climb the mango trees.

Many people on the tour found the village horrifyingly primitive but I didn't. Primitive, yes, but not horrifying. I can understand why they did after seeing a woman washing clothes on the edge of the river and slapping them against the rock to get them clean. Also a woman with lovely long hair washing it in the river (backwater or whatever you call it).

The place, itself, reminded me of red Pine Camp on Golden Lake in the 1950s, with coconut and mango trees instead of pine. Actually it was less primitive than read by because they have electricity and I don't think red Pine did then-at least not in the cabins. I don't think the village had indoor plumbing and although I felt the need I really didn't want to check out this aspect of their living conditions. Their houses looked a decent size and were made out of some kind of cement. I wish I hadn't felt it would be to nosy to get a peek inside. The houses are not all bunched together so each family has some privacy. I got the sense of a strong feeling of community.

We didn't take too many pictures or video here because it seemed rude to do so-sort of like treating them like they were animals in a zoo.

Talking to the girls, we found out 30 families live here and they said 600 people (we may have misunderstood that number). The girls go to school on a water bus.

I asked our guide later on the way back how the people earn a living. All I could understand is that it used to be a fishing village but for some reason that is no longer possible and now something about the government-I don't know if this means welfare or some kind of government job off the island. The people seemed very friendly and happy. I hope this explains why I wasn't as horrified as some of the other tour people. Frankly, I found their attitude patronizing and snobbish and you can understand where the expression "ugly American"came from.

Dad and I have just looked at the pictures and a word of explanation. Number one is of the weaving ladies. The second is a typical house-not the fanciest one it shows the tone. I forgot to mention each house has a wall around it but I don't know why. The third picture is the blacksmith-not everything look this primitive. The next two are the walled pool I described. The next one is a little car called a tuk-tuk.

The next one shows the market next to the nice houses and the "pants"the men wore. Notice the guy waving at us on our bus. The next one shows two ladies on the left wearing Sarah Rees (not the most gorgeous ones I saw) and a little girl holding an umbrella. All the ladies carried parasols because of the hot Sun. On the right you can see two tourists taking a picture of a little girl. Next one is just a market picture. Next one is the inside of the boat (after they moved us around to balance the weight!). Next another view of the boat. Next five pictures are views of the shoreline from the boat. The next one shows the guy pulling the boat-note the boat is empty because this is when we were the only people on it!

We just looked at the videos and I am so pleased. I think you can see why I was so impressed with the island and how funny it was when there were just four of us on the boat and we didn't know where they were taking us. By the way, notice the plastic chairs-kind of takes away from the atmosphere.