Hi All,
So many of you have written saying you are quite relieved at our change of plans. We do appreciate that. What is a bit reassuring is that almost all of the cruisers who made the passage from Malaysia or Thailand to Galle, Sri Lanka and then to Cochin are saying that it was just about their worst passage ever. I find that reassuring because we made it under our own power and with almost all systems in tact by the end. Of course, we did manage to avoid some of the worst of the storm while friends were stuck pretty much in it. But whatever happened DoraMac and Randal got us here safe and sound.
We don’t have many plans in place for the time starting now. We will plan to leave India for the Maldives at the end of the month. We plan to stop first at Uligan an island in the northern most part of the Maldives because it has great diving and we do have four diving tanks we’d filled to use in the Red Sea. Then we will head on to Marmaris to pack up DoraMac and ship her off. Other than that our plans are so new we have no details. Here are some follow-up photos and odds and ends.
Ru
DoraMac
Cochin Miscellaneous
My treatment ladies.
This morning was my last treatment so I asked the ladies if I could take their photo. The one on the left is engaged and will marry in 7 months. The one on the right is married with two young children in primary school. They live about 200 kilometers from Cochin so stay in rooms upstairs in the treatment building. During a month they get 4 days off but both worked on me the entire 7 days I was there. When I asked about that, they smiled and shrugged and said there were no other women workers. They earn 4,000 rupees per month. I don’t know if they pay for their room and food or if that’s part of their pay. I speak no Malayalam and their English was a bit limited. They were very sweet and concerned and made it all bearable And the pain mostly seems gone.
When they work, their saris are pulled up around their knees and they wear the purple aprons tied around their waists to try to keep most of the oil off their uniforms.
Sarah Cohen – corrections.
This is the real photo of Sarah Cohen’s wedding…I found that out during my second visit. In the other photo, Sarah was standing to the brides left.
Abdul, Sarah, Thaha
I had met Thaha the first visit but assumed he was Abdul who was mentioned in the Washington Post article. They are brothers and both help Sarah.
I also read in Kerala and Her Jews that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi came to Cochin for the 400th anniversary of the Cochin Synagogue to take part in the celebration.
Hungry for information; they really do eat paper and about anything else so are the trash collectors of Mattancherry.
This jazzy tuk tuk either said Elvis or reminded me of Elvis, but somehow Elvis sticks in my mind.
The driver was very nice and took me to the veggie and fruit street and then drove around looking for a bakery that sold whole wheat bread.
One evening 12 of us took the ferry across to Ernakulam for dinner at the Grand Hotel. It took 4 tuk tuks carrying 3 cruisers each to get us there.
Americans Bill and Amy on Estrelitta, homeport, Florida.
Bill and Judy on BeBe, from Texas and Michael and Linda on B’Sheret, from Wisconsin.
Michael and Linda are the friends we’ll travel with to New Delhi. They, and Bill and Judy on BeBe are also shipping their boats.
Brits Terry and Fiona on Roam II
They came from the Mediterranean this past year and are heading towards South East Asia.
Brits Chris and Trish on Sapristy registered in South Africa
After dinner we loaded back into the tuk tuk parade back to the ferry pier. Fiona had called the Bolgatty Hotel and it had sent a small boat to bring us all back to the marina since the public ferry had stopped running at 8pm. We paid 10 rupee per person.
Three young working women came to visit.
I met these ladies on the ferry from Ernakulam back to Bolgatty. They were going to spend an hour or so walking around the resort. They took out their camera phones and made a short video about me. They bought some bags of popcorn from a vendor and gave one to me. I invited them to our boat. They asked how India compared to China. I wish they could talk with our Chinese friends BoBo, Zoey and Singkey. They all look so lovely in their saris. Two of the women are 24 and one 23. They work here in Cochin and live in a “hostel” because home, where their parents live, is too far and I guess they don’t want to live at home any more.
Bolgatty guards at the gate.
When the marina was first built lots of people came to see the boats and climb all over them so guards were added and RULES. Now tour boats go by the marina and we wave and say hello.