After an eventful 12 days at sea, we arrived in India at the Port of Cochin. While most SASer’s went north to Delhi, Mumbai, and Agra, I chose to stay more local. I remained in the southern state of Kerala for the duration of my six days. Here, I traveled within the state
The first day in Cochin, I began with a field program named “Highlights of Cochin.” Through this, we visited St. Francis Church built in 1503 to begin with. From there we walked along the side of the river where we saw giant Chinese fishing nets which were fascinating. After we got back on the bus, we headed off to the Spice Market and the Jewish Synagogue in Jew Town. We ran into SASer’s everywhere in Jew Town! Obviously it was a popular tourist area. Goats and cows roaming the streets, cars driving on every side of the road, locals trying to sell you anything and everything. Yep, this pretty much sums up my time India.
That first night, my friend on the ship, Sam, decided that she didn’t have time to make her night field program since she had a 1:00 am flight to catch. So she gave it to me and I ended up doing this program called “University Welcome Reception.” It was only about a five minute bus ride from the ship to the hotel where the reception was located. There, we met and interacted with approximately 60 girls from St. Theresa’s college. We were served a beautiful Indian dinner along with traditional dances and the girls from St. Theresa’s did henna on everyone. I did henna as well and had my own little fake tattoo for only a couple of days.
The next day was when the fun really began. Just outside the gates of the port where our ship was docked, we would be mauled each day by tuk-tuk drivers hoping to drive us students around the city. They could be a bit intimidating and pushy at times. Although one of them seemed different from the others. He was a bit more reserved, more friendly, and nowhere near as pushy as the others. His name was Ishaque. Two of my friends, Carley and Ilsa, decided to tag along with me on our tuk-tuk city tour with Ishaque. Between the three of us, it cost 900 Rupees ($13.85) for an entire day of driving us around. Obviously we paid more at the end. The only sight that we all really wanted to see was Jain temple. It wasn’t much different than any other temple… Other than the fact that at 12:15 pm something very unique happened. The hundreds if not thousands of pigeons that lined the temple rooftops began to fly in circles around the temple beginning at the rhythm of the traditional music beat. How did they train these pigeons to do this? No clue, but it was pretty darn neat.
From Jain Temple, Ishaque took us to the only clay built church in all of India. Ishaque introduced us to Father Benjamin in the church and we talked with him for an hour or so until we left for lunch. We went to a small local restaurant that Ishaque took us to where we invited him to eat with us. He eventually gave in. For the most part, he would take us to places and wait for us in his tuk-tuk while we shopped, ate, etc. This was nice to sit down and have a meal with him. Ishaque took us to many more shops and markets afterwards (where he would obviously receive some sort of commission for us going into the store/purchasing) which we enjoyed. Towards the end of the day, we were getting a bit tired and were about ready to head back to the ship to eat dinner there.
We didn’t go back to the ship right away though… Ishaque asked us if we wanted to do henna. I told him I had henna done last night so we didn’t need to despite the fact that Carly and Ilsa hadn’t yet done it. None of us were too up for henna at the moment. But then, Ishaque said ‘do you want to do henna at my house?’ Well, who can resist that offer? So he drove us to his house where we met his sister, wife, and two daughters. Ishaque’s daughters were cute and extremely shy at first. Carley had some water color paints with her along with her journal and did everything she could do get the girls to draw something in her journal. Finally, Ishaque stepped in and showed the girls how to draw with the water colors and I have attached a picture below. We were welcomed to Ishaque’s house with banana chips, tea, and warm smiles. I won’t ever forget this experience.
The third day in India, we visited a rural village known as Chendamangalam. We were greeted with warm, smiling faces and a freshly cut coconut to eat and drink from. We learned how to make a special Indian fish meal that is famous in the state of Kerala. We ate this fish along with much more on a banana leaf. Don’t ask me what the other foods were though… They all tasted pretty good though! After lunch, we walked through this small village with our tour guide, Valentina. She told us that this village is run off of women’s work and that the women of the village are actually trained to learn new skills to raise them and their families out of poverty. We went to a handloom weaving center towards the end of our program which was fascinating to see the machinery and working conditions.
Day four I was on a field program visiting Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity. I have only the memories and stories from this experience since we weren’t allowed to bring any cameras or phones. While it was incredible to see all that the nuns were doing for these mentally challenged children, we all felt an uneasy sense about the field program. Some of the field programs that SAS offers will take you to a school or foundation of the like and in a way it almost feels as if we are at a zoo. Really we didn’t have many interactions with the kids but mainly walked around, toured the facility, and saw the children, which overall was a bit unfortunate. SAS does offer many incredible field programs but I didn’t feel this to be one of them.
Day five I was on my own again. As usual when I don’t have anything planned for the day, I always just go to breakfast on the ship and go from there. This particular breakfast, I met with a friend named Amber and we ended up spending all of day five together. We started off by heading into the main city on a ferry that cost a whopping 4 Rupees which translates roughly to about $0.06. This is my kind of place! Once we arrived near the city center, we had tuk-tuk drivers swarming us right out of the gate. Despite our plan being just to walk around and enjoy the day, maybe find some wifi, we quickly found ourselves doing just the opposite.
We still had about a half mile walk to the city center from the ferry. It’s hot too. Over 90F and +90% humidity made it tougher to fully enjoy our walk. A tuk-tuk driver along our walk offered us a free ride to the city center if we would only stop at one shop for only 2 minutes. Even if we didn’t buy anything, they still got a commission for taking us to the shop. We agreed. What the heck. Free ride. That one shop and 2 minutes quickly turned into 30 minutes followed by a second store and another 30 minutes. The stores are nothing like the U.S. and many times, it seems as if it is absolutely impossible to leave.
Regardless, we did make it into the city center. We found wifi at a hotel where we sat down, ate lunch and had a pot of tea. Posting the 12 pictures from Neptune Day and South Africa took nearly 2 hours to upload all of the pictures! Oh well, Amber and I had a nice lunch anyway. Within two minutes of us leaving the hotel to do some more walking, we found ourselves sitting in yet another tuk-tuk. This time though it was a ‘tuk-tuk Ferrari.’ The driver had his rig so tuned up I don’t know if you could hardly call it a tuk-tuk. We had him take us to a movie theatre about 8 miles down the road. Of course, not before stopping at 5 other shops and spending 3 hours total to get to that movie theater.
Throughout our movie, I was overwhelmed multiple times with different scents that we had come across during our day. Firstly, I wreaked of DEET. I didn’t want to get any kind of disease transmitted by mosquitos so I showered that morning in DEET. Secondly, I was wearing a shirt that I bought in India at one of our many shops. I would argue that all Indian fabric has a distinct smell but it’s difficult to explain exactly how that it smells. Finally, I was overwhelmed in moments during the movie by the smell of perfume. Again, at our many shop stops, we were given dozens of perfumes to test out on our wrists and clothing.
Our final tuk-tuk of the day came after our movie. Many of the friends that I have traveled with have had some kind of phone plan to get them around town which has been extremely nice. Well, neither Amber nor I had one… I knew this would be an adventure and I told her that. It was dark by now and I knew it wouldn’t necessarily be easy getting back to the ship not knowing any of the local language, Malayalam. We walked for a mile or so until we realized it was much to far to try and walk back to the ship. We told a tuk-tuk driver that we needed to go to Willingdon Island where our ship was parked. After a bit of negotiating, we finally agreed on paying him 420 Rupees ($6.46) which was all we had between the two of us.
The driver agreed and we hopped in for our final ride of the night. About halfway through the ride, Amber pulls out the money she has to have it ready for the driver. She miscounted… We ended up having only 370 Rupees. I told the driver that we didn’t have enough, but fortunately he assured us that it was alright. I felt bad about the whole situation so at the end I was thinking what I had in my backpack that I could give him. We ended up paying the tuk-tuk driver 370 Rupees and a pack of gum for our ride back from the city. What a day!
Day 6 was also an incredible experience. We went to a rural village about one hour east of Cochin on a field program called “Kerala’s village life by boat.” The title was a bit misleading. We did a 10-15 minute backwater canoe type adventure through the small village. It was a 6 hour program so I figured most of our day would be on the boat. This was not the case. Nevertheless, we had a great day exploring the village while learning all about coconut trees and how every single part of the tree can be used.
A local climbed up the palm tree and started whacking the stems of the branches with the femur of a buffalo to stimulate liquid from the tree that would be caught in buckets at the top of the palm tree. He then brought the liquid down, filtered it and gave it to us to drink. It is a natural drink that ferments itself when stored in a cool dark area after 2-3 hours. Nothing goes to waste! Just like my time in India, I tried to make the most out of my 6 days in the state of Kerala and not waste a single moment. Here are five fotos from India.
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