Kochi, India March 18th

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Before writing about Kochi I’d like to thank whoever it was; the British Empire, Pam Am Clipper, expansionism following WW II, or Coke A Cola, for spreading English across the world.  You may have noticed that all the signage, both commercial and government, was in English in Hong Kong and Singapore.  Well that has continued on our trip.  I am writing this as we sail away from Salalah, Oman after spending the last two weeks in India and Arabic countries.  All of the signage (as you will see) is either in English or native language & English.  It has made our life much simpler.

Kochi (formerly Cochin) is in southwest India on the Arabian Sea.  We arrived following our passage through  the Gulf of Mannar between India and Sir Lanka.  It is the best port south of Mumbai and has a very active commercial shipping base and Naval presence.  There are a number of small port towns and a large harbor so a ferry service is essential.  Here is a local ferry passing our ship as we sailed in.

Our berth was actually very shallow, only about 10 feet under our keel.  Here you can see mud being kicked up by the ship thrusters as we maneuver for docking.

Just as an aside, here is a picture of the salt from sea air on the railing you see in the picture above.  They have to clean the verandas once a week.

The first thing we had to do was get transportation.  So we worked a deal with a Tuc Tuc driver.  The charge was three hours for $5.00.  Before you say how inexpensive that was take a look at our transportation.

As you can see there are a lot of Tuc Tucs.  It is one of the key ways of getting around.  As we understand they are only allowed here and a few provinces.   They are a little dangerous and not much safety equipment.

Here are some shots form our journey.  A corner store.

Our spacious accommodations…..with air conditioning.

This is a storage area for Teak wood brought in from Malaysia.  We saw a lot of truck loads of this moving around.

Some street scenes.

Our Tuc Tuc needed gas.  That is an old soda bottle he is filling.

A melon stand.

Churches

This church and cemetery were established in 1724.

Local homes of middle class.

A commercial laundry.  This is the sorting and folding room.

These are the washing rooms.  They beat the clothes on the stone platforms in front of them.  We thought this was a large operation but were told in Mumbai they have laundries with 5,000 of these washing room.

The drying area.  They don’t use clothespins.  They have a double wrap rope that the clothes are pressed into.

This is a charcoal iron.  He is filling his iron with hot coals.  No electricity needed.

There were a lot of goats all around and over the roads.  I’d have pictures of the goats in the road by when the Tuc Tuc swerved around them you held on rather than took pictures.  We didn’t see any cows.

This is called Chinese Net fishing.  They us a fulcrum with rocks tied to a rope to raise the net when full of fish.  These rigs line the banks of many rivers in the area.

Western Union has been in every country we visited.

You may have heard of how the Indian truck drivers decorate their trucks.  Here are some examples.

A view over our drivers shoulder.  Tuc Tucs don’t get a lot of respect from trucks and busses so were were constantly being run off the road.  The traffic is very “free wheeling” from our perspective; two lane roads with five lanes of vehicles, no traffic signals at all and lots of horn honking.  I wanted to give our driver some extra $$ to let me drive for a while but you know who said, “No Way!!”

After two hours of being up close and personal with the sights, sounds and smells of India in our Tuc Tuc Noreen had had enough.  We had to make an emergency stop at the Taj Hotel, a five star establishment on the beach.

A couple of glasses of wine and she was ready to venture out again…….even if it was just back to the ship.  An interesting point about the hotel.   The put ice and sea shells in the urinals.  No idea what is in the ladies room.

Standing by a hotel elephant statue for the fun of it.

One of the unintended advantages of the Tuc Tuc was that Noreen was so worn out that we didn’t go shopping.  So we got a real car, with doors and windows, and headed back to the ship.  Then a day at sea and on to Mumbai and the Taj Mahal.  BTW, Noreen will never let me pick the transport again without her seeing if first.  But it was a lot of fun.