Is This India?

It's hard to believe I'm back in India, a place I really thought I'd never come back to.  My last trip to India was intense and I didn't really have a lot of desire to come back. 

When I traveled to India in 2006 I spent the majority of the time in Delhi, Agra and Chennai.  All three are major cities packed with people, poverty and pollution.  It was tough to see some of things I saw, like the cops beating a homeless man with no legs in the train station.  But I now realize that judging an entire country, especially one as large and diverse as India, was a foolish act of youth.

I'm only one day in to our visit but this part of India is already presenting a stark contrast to the other areas I've visited.  We are ported in Kochi, formerly Cochin, located on the west coast along the Arabian Sea.  Now there is still garbage strewn throughout the streets, crippled beggars and three-wheeled auto rickshaws weaving through traffic but the area is much greener and has a different, more tropical feel than the dirt and grim of cities I visited last time.

On our first day here in the Kerala state of India Kelly and I led a small group of SASers around the old city of Cochin.  We had a really good and knowledgeable tour guide who guided us through the streets of the "Jew Town" area, with a visit to the spice market, a synagogue and an old Catholic church where Vasco Da Gama was originally buried.  Da Gama had died there and his remains stayed buried there for 14 years before they were returned to his home in Portugal.  I've always found it weird when people dig up old remains to transplant them to another grave.

The highlight of the trip was getting to see the Chinese fishing nets that our still in operation.  Granted it's mainly for tourist and a small handful of fishing stands that sell fresh fish nearby but it was still an engaging activity to watch.  It's a simple mechanism, the nets are lowered into the water from the shore using rocks on ropes to balance the weight and, after being in the water for a few minutes, a team of men raise the nets with a catch of small shoreline fish and crustaceans.  And to think at one time in history it was cutting age technology.

Later in the evening we hired an auto rickshaw, affectionately known as "Toot toots", for a three hour hunt for mosquito spray.  We must have stopped at 8 shops before we found a small bottle with a small amount of Deet in it.  Something is better than nothing though because they have mosquitoes here that will suck a pint of blood from you and leave you with either Malaria or Dengue fever.  With our protective spray acquired, we had a spicy dinner of Indian food and then back to the ship.  The whole 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour, cost us $2.  Talk about fuel efficiency.  We'll be sure to look for our driver, Enis, on our next toot toot ride around the city.