Cochin, India 3-25-07

Welcome to India! The sights are more than you can take in in one sitting. You might want to look at this and then look again later. I had an idea in my had of what India would be like. I was wrong. My father was in WWII and was stationed in India. He had a very one sided opinion of India and you can imagine what that was. Of course, during wartimes things are magnified a thousand or more times worse, so maybe he wasn't wrong either. Anyway, here goes. I will do my best to explain Cochin or Kochi as the local people call it. Cochin is an up and coming place. Many large companies are moving headquarters to Cochin from the US and the UK. You could see lots of construction going on and you could also see a lot of poverty. This city was not filthy dirty though. The river we were in was pretty polluted but there were people bathing in it, washing their dishes in it and dumping their garbage in it. I guess if you live here, the river is a way of life and you become immune to any diseases that might be floating around in it! I kept my bottle of Purell in my lifebag and hoped that the kids kept their mouths tightly shut when we were splashed by oncoming vessels!! I definitely would not have wanted to go in for a swim. When you see the pictures you'll be surprised like me. Cochin is called the Queen of the Arabian Sea, it's low lying region and inland waterways have many rice fields and are the home to hundreds of fishing boats and the fishing nets, oh my those fishing nets!! Who knew that the southern part of India was comprised of hundreds of small islands?? Not me? When we pulled into the harbor and I saw all the islands and that there were people "stuck" on them, I was shocked. Taking ferries is how they get around, but some never leave their island. You see the "cast" sytem is still very much alive here. Pretty much all the people in the same cast live on the same island in this part of India. That means to say if you are born into a very poverty stricken family, even though you may be bright enough to go to Harvard, that can't happen. You can't marry outside of your cast, you just have to make the best of what you have. It is horribly sad. If you are from a middle-class family, that is where you stay. No chance to improve your postion. There are still arranged marriages here and that happens when the parents find a suitable mate for their child. Then there is some trading of cows and the like and the two can marry. Even the children from the highest class that go off to the US for higher education, come home and let their parents arrange their marriages! Most of India is Hindu. The Muslim population is growing. The Hindus only have one or two children and the Muslims have six to eight. Their population will take over at this rate. Christianity is most popular in the southern part of India, where Cochin is located. We saw a few churches and passed one by waterway that you could hear the children's choir singing. It was perfect. I am sorry to say that the whole time we were in India, Mother Theresa's name never was mentioned. That bothered me, considering all she did not only for the Christian population but for the country of India. Calcutta of course is where she was and that was far to the east of where we were. Let's give it a look!! Look at these fishing nets!!!! These crazy looking things are made out of teak wood. It seems that a fully grown teak tree must be 50 years old to harvest but they don't want the trunk of the tree they want the branches, as they are the strongest. You can harvest branches when they are 25 years old. All those spindly looking things are teak branches. They hold up gigantic nets and are weighted in the back with large rocks and men!! They lower their nets 3 times a day. We never saw a big catch while we were on the backwaters. That is where our tour took us, through the backwaters, to see how these people live.

These nets were invented by the Chinese.
A group of guys hanging out by the river looking at us. You will notice that most of the men are wearing very westernized clothing but most of the women still wear their traditional dress, the sari.
The QE II was in port the sameday as we were. Got a picture for you. That ship was built in 1969 and is showing signs of her age!
One of the churches we saw along the riverbank. It was just fantasic when we got to hear the children singing. Altough they were singing in some slang version of Hindi it was wonderful!
I love trees. This one was on the property of an old hotel. Poverty was everywhere. I thought this was bad until we got to Mumbai. When you see those pictures, you will cry.

Two men hauling a load of rocks in a canoe.

Many of their fishing boats were wilding painted with crazy names. We even saw one named The Posieden!

Karen and Larry trying to answer all of Nicholas' questions!


It was 100 in the shade on this slow boat in the backwaters! We had all put on plenty of bug spray and I am happy to say we were not attacked!!

A house boat on the river.
More of those fishing nets. Looking at this picture would you think you were in India???
Guys getting ready to go out for the day fshing. Many boats looked like they were not seaworthy but what do I know?? We had a great tour here on and in between islands. We then had a sea day and arrived in Mumbai were we immediately took a flight to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. I will post one photo of the Taj and then call it a day. We took almost 300 pictures while we were there. It is going to take me some time but I'll get it done. I really want you to see it, feel it, smell it and taste it like we did.