Happy Easter from Cochin, India

Finally, after all of the problems we had getting a Visa in Toronto, we are in India.  As in Toronto, the Indian officials required everyone on the ship to fill in more long and confusing forms.  Then we were told that no one could leave the ship until there was a face-to-face meeting with immigration officials and every single passenger and crew member.  However, since another cruise ship had arrived yesterday afternoon and the officials had to work late, they could not come to the ship until they had all had an adequate sleep.  As mentioned, the same people do their best to confuse tourists here as they do in Toronto.

Despite all the road blocks, we’ve made it.  We are in Cochin, a major port city in the “small” state of Kerla with 33 million people.  India itself has 1.25 billion people, so 33 million isn’t very much.  We took a tour of the area, most of it by boat, and got to see both modern Cochin and the very old part of the city.  There are dramatic contrasts here, from beautiful, modern hotels, condos and businesses to old dilapidated homes with roofs about to cave in.  We also got to see amazing colourful fishing boats as well as huge Chinese fishing nets, an ancient method used to catch fish from the docks.  They were in operation today - fascinating!

 

Modern Cochin

Multicoloured fishing boats.  In harbour today because it is Easter

Chinese Fishing nets in India

Lovely hotel building

Other kind of building

Fisherman's home - women's work

....and the men

Our guide gave us a lot of very interesting information about this area, which is  60% Hindu, 20% Roman Catholic and 20% “other”. The state of Kerala has the only democratically elected communist government in India.  As a result, worker strikes are the norm and it also explains the attitude of the immigration officials.  Generally, this is an agrarian economy with farming, spice production and fishing as well as tourism as the major sources of income. Because of the problems with the unionized workforce, most manufacturing occurs in the state north of Kerala. 

Our tour ended with a Kathakali performance at the very fancy Taj Malabar Hotel. This performance involves the telling of a folk tale through mime, with accompanying drums, and very elaborate costumes. Kathakali performances usually begin about 8 PM and end 11 or 12 hours later the next morning.  Thankfully, our performance, interesting as it was, lasted only 45 minutes.

Theatrical performance

 We leave this evening for Mumbai, arriving there on Tuesday

Seabourn Quest docked at Cochin