COCHIN, INDIA--Friday, April 12, 2013

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I have written about the Indian visa ordeal in our trip to South Texas blog, and everyone we talked to on the ship complained about their frustrating experience with the on-line paperwork. Well, just before we left Singapore, we learned that EVERYONE on the ship, whether you went ashore or not, had to have an Indian visa. Thankfully, we had gotten ours.

Friday: We had to fill out more documents for India brought to us last night--a card for each port. Now that the ship had arrived at this first Indian port, people were gathered by tour bus number in the theater area, were lined up, and walked through the corridors to the one of the dining rooms, where they got their passports back from the ship crew, and then walked to the Indian emigration agents, to have a face-to-face examination of all the documents.

Since we were not going on a tour, we waited until the main crowd had left and then went through the same process. We were given back a stamped card and then walked a few feet and turned back our passports to the ship’s crew for them to file away again. With about 2,000 passengers this process took quite a bit of time this morning.

We were now ready to walk down the stairs and off the ship after first scanning our plastic ship pass in the reader at the door, and then, showing our card to the emigration agent at the bottom of the ramp. This process was repeated 4 times, one for each port we entered in India.

A bit about Cochin: the port was used by Arabs, Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans in ancient times for trading in silks, spices, ivory, and fragrant woods. The Apostle Paul brought Christianity here in 52 AD. Every Colonial influence found in India can be found in Cochin. The port is open all year, even in monsoon season as it situated among a series of islands and lagoons. After independence from England in 1947, the India Navy began training here and has a large presence in the town.

We thought we could find a taxi and arrange a 2-hour tour, which we felt would cover the main places of interest and was about our limit in this heat and humidity. As we got onto the dock, greeted by Cochin drummers, we saw there was a hut where everyone was clustered around and it was from there that we saw that the taxies were hired.

While standing in bunches on all sides of this hut with no lines and only one man inside filling out forms tediously by hand, we saw our friends from LA and decided to split a taxi with them again. After a bit of a wait, we got settled in the AIR CONDITIONED taxi, and off we went.

Our “tour”: We drove out of the immediate port area after we all showed our “yellow” cards at the gate and headed toward town. Parked on both sides of the wide road we were traveling down were extremely colorfully painted trucks that seemed to be waiting for loads of lumber that were stacked in the lots behind them. A ship full of logs was in the harbor. It never occurred to us that India would import wood. The taxi driver said the wood was mahogany from Indonesia.

The old Fort Cochin area is more of a village with the modern city of Ernakalam on another island connected by bridges with ferries running constantly to and fro, island to island.

Our driver drove us first through a nice residential area with various brightly colored homes to an old, old, fashioned laundry. Here was a cement public facility for women to wash, hang clothes to dry on twisted rope lines in the sun (no clothespins needed), and men to iron clothes with extremely heavy charcoal filled irons.

After walking around and looking a bit we returned to the taxi and he drove by the Old Dutch Cemetery and then to a fishing beach that had some of the Chinese fishing nets drying up in the air. The tree trunks of some of the trees were painted in bright colors here and held some significance, but we are not sure what it was. Some called these painted, dead trees, “The Tree of Life.” Saw other examples around town of this practice.

Whether you want to or not, all the taxi drivers INSIST that you shop in certain stores, no matter how much you protest that you do NOT want to shop. The practice is so widespread that they must get a cut of the sold items or something. I know years ago, when we were in Thailand, the taxi driver said that one of the jewelry stores paid for his gas if he brought tourists there. So, into one of the stores we went to look at the items for sale. Then went next door and looked at a spice shop.

Our next stop was at the Church of Saint Francis, the oldest European constructed church in India having been built in 1503 by Franciscan Friars. When the Dutch conquered the area in 1663, this building was turned into a Protestant Church and then an Anglican Church when the British arrived in 1795.

Vasco da Gama died in Cochin and was buried in this church in 1524. His remains were returned to Portugal 14 years later. In Valerie’s picture there is a “blue sign” in the center left that marks the spot of the original burial site. Note also the fabric rectangular fans hanging from the ceiling on rope pulls that were moved by slaves to cool the church.

The Catholic Church remained strong along the coast of India after over 100 years of Portuguese control and is reflected in the number of churches, universities, schools, and convents. We made a stop at the lovely Bishop’s House/convent and looked around the grounds.

The taxi driver pointed out the jackfruit and tamarind trees and the way the fruit of both grow out from the trunk. Tamarind looks somewhat like shiny, bright green, big, elongated grapes. Valerie said they taste like sour grass we used to pull from the field and suck on when we were kids. I declined to taste. You could hear a very loud tree frog croaking. Our guide said he is bright yellow about 2 inches and is not poisonous.

Next up was a drive by the Sevanan Gosripuran Temple that seemed to consist of structures in and around a concrete water pond and large temple building across the street. The temple had a really nice colorful carved lintel over one of its doorways.

In this area and many others, you could see livestock (mostly cows) wandering around. Cochin seemed to have a larger number of goats also on the streets than other cities. Our driver told us that the animals each had a name and knew where they lived and typically went home at night.

We drove through narrow streets with all kinds of shops and vendors on each side until we got to the Mattaucheri Palace. This palace was built by the Portuguese as a gift for the Raja of Cochin and then was rebuilt by the Dutch. It houses a museum, but the whole place was closed. There are murals painted on the wooden walls we would have liked to have seen.

A few streets from this “Palace,” is an area called “Jew Town.” We looked at the old cemetery as the taxi drove by the front of it and then Valerie walked a block or so down a “closed-to-vehicles street” to take pictures of the Paradesi Synagogue built by Ezekial Rahabi in 1508.

We were just about out of time so we asked the taxi driver to take us to a supermarket where we could buy some drinks to drink now and to take on board ship. We were successful with the diet cokes and a mango juice.

Went through all the clearance to get on board again and then ate lunch in our room so that we could strip out of “public clothes” and sack out to cool off.

That evening, we had a light dinner at the Windjammer Café and then watched the ship as she pulled out of port. It sailed by several small islands covered with cormorants and nesting egrets and others with nets and colorful fishing boats on the shore. Further along there was a great view of the Chinese fishing nets, city, ferries, islands, and various-sized boats as we pulled out into open waters.

As a post-script, of all the cities we visited in India, we found Cochin to be most colorful. The saris were richer in color and the trucks, boats, houses, and trees were painted bright colors. It was usually a delight for the eye, but sometimes, as was the case of a green and purple modern office building, it was a little jarring.

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