This is a piece of the colorfulness of India. Color everywhere and on everyone.
The 5 man fishing boats used in the small harbor shown to us by our guide.
This is where the fisherman and their families live. This is not the house, but the street.
The Hindu festival. The large floats are carried by boys who jump up and down and spin around to make the fringe shake. Very lovely
Notice the pierced chest on the boy in the middle. The boys with rods in their mouths, have them thru their pierced tongues
See. And we think our kids and grandkids go overboard with piercings. Here it is a religious experience
The men mostly wear cloths wrapped around their lower half. Sometimes the cloths are white, but often designed (and often they are being retied or held up )
This is a woman hand washing her cloths by hitting them against a concrete block repeatedly and rinsing them in the water she is standing in
This is a 40 year old truck. The older trucks are decorated like this. Again, the colors are amazing
A water buffalo, is he looking at ME?
March 21
Well, we are entering our last month of the trip. I know that still sounds like a lot of time, and it is, but at the same time it seems like we are heading toward the end, and believe it or not, we are still not ready to go home.
Today we went to India. Cochin is made up of many different sections. There is the old part, the new part and many islands. We took a tour, by tuk tuk, see picture when available, for over 4 hours in the rain. We had a lot of fun. We saw a closed Jewish Synagogue, an open Church of South India that was having Good Friday services, a Dutch cemetery, a fish market and lots of stores. We also went to a small fishing area, where we saw the fishing boats and met some of the children. After learning their names, taking their pictures, one of them showed us his house. It was made up of 2 concrete rooms, with a very small yard surrounded by blue plastic tarps, for privacy. We did not see much, since we did not want to intrude, but we were invited for coffee, which we, sorry to say, declined. We did not want to intrude too much and we were not sure how safe it would be for us to drink coffee made with their water.
We also went to a "hand wash". At first I thought it was going to be a religious place to wash your hands. What it actually was, was a hand laundry. There were both men and women doing the wash. The clothes were then dried on lines held by crossed sticks on each end.
We then saw a special Hindu festival. It only happens every March. As you can see from the pictures, there were many beautifully dressed women, and pierced men and boys. The males mostly had pierced tongues. Even the very young ones participated. We were not able to find out what the meaning of this ritual is. Some of the boys and men had pierced chests. There were also men there that would hold huge decorated things on their shoulders and they would twirl around bouncing up and down so the decorations would move. I was shown around by a man who volunteered to do so, and shown the little temple where we were blessed with ash from the incents.
Arleen had to buy a native style outfit of long shirt, pants and scarf, each of a different bright color
In 2 days we will be in Mumbai, (Bombay). It will be Easter. We will visit Jewish Synagogues that day.
Duane will be conducting an Easter Service on Saturday, since most of the passengers will be going ashore on Easter.
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