Creative PennyG: Intriguing India

Cruise Day 7 – Cochin

We were most impressed with the tropical vegetation and river fronted homes and apartments as we sailed into Cochin. The Harbour is actually a lake, not open ocean and the water becomes brackish as the sea and fresh water meet.

We had been warned about the complicated immigration process so we were pleasantly surprised when our landing cards were simply stamped and we moved on to our bus. After driving down Mahatma Gandhi Road, which is packed full of court and magistrate buildings, colleges and schools, we stopped at Lord Shiva’s Temple, a rather plain looking building next to a more ornate temple complete with multi-coloured timber carvings. Our guide, Sri, has a Masters in History and proudly pointed out the college from which he gained his qualification.

Next we drove to Dhobi Khana, a commercial laundry that was introduced in 1897 by the Dutch for their servicemen and later for local people and businesses. Dirty laundry is picked up and delivered to Dhobi Khana, where it is washed early in the morning and hung out to dry, not with pegs but using twisted ropes. It is then collected and taken to the ironing room, pressed, folded and returned to the owner. The service is cheap and is ideal for people who don’t have their own laundries. One man, who carried washing and folded and ironed, has been working at the laundry for 41 years.

We arrived at the beach and wandered past market stalls where young mothers in beautiful saris and with babes in arms attempted to sell us bracelets and scarves. There we viewed the Chinese Fishing Nets, impressive in their size and structure. On to St Francis Church, the first European church built in India, in the 16^th Century. It was converted to protestant by the Dutch in 1663 and for fourteen years was the site of Vasco da Gama’s grave before his body was removed back to Portugal. After a refreshment break at David Hall art gallery, housed in yet another 16^th Century building, we visited a women’s co-operative that sells spices, silks, jewellery, pashmina and souvenirs.

Temple

On the street

Newer high rises

Older high rises

Ironing at Dhobi Khana - note the iron

giant Chinese fishing nets

Rubbish everywhere - this is on the beach

Cruise Day 9 - Goa

In the early morning we boarded a very old bus for our day in Goa. Fortunately the aircon was very effective, because we needed it. Our first stop was the Aguada Fort which was built by the Portuguese in 1612 to thwart invasions by the Dutch and French. Back then it had 79 cannons and is an impressive structure which includes its own lighthouse. The second fort was the Reis Margos, built by the local Indians with 39 cannons installed, some of which remain. Here there is a museum that displays Goa’s extensive military history and the views from both forts are spectacular.

Panjim is Goa’s capital and we first wandered through the city streets before spending time at the huge local market with fruit and vegetables, flowers and everything from mobile phones to kitchenware. An Indian buffet lunch was served to us at a traditional Portuguese house on the river where a trio of local entertainers entertained us with well-known songs.

Our guide for the day, Joachim, has a Bachelor of Commerce but has been a freelance guide for four years. Many Indians have multiple jobs and change them frequently, but unemployment remains low. Joachim was fun and informative and, given the apparent total lack of road rules in Goa, even left the bus at times to remove obstacles from the road and to direct traffic. His repartee with the driver in Indian, and several near misses on the roads only added to our entertainment. After telling several jokes on the way back he said he had now shown us the coastline but asked what was in the middle of Goa? Inspiration struck and I said, ‘an O’. He looked shocked that anyone would know the answer but congratulated me!

In the ceiling inside the entrance to the fort are holes through which boiling oil was poured over the enemy as they tried to enter!

The church next door to the fort

Goa city

Fresh fruit and vegetable market

Entertainment at lunch at the Portuguese house

Cruise Days 10 and 11 – Mumbai

Mumbai is the financial and commercial capital of India, and hosts a plethora of beautiful historic stone buildings. We began our bus tour with a drive through the city, our female guide pointing out important buildings like the General Post Office, the enormous Victoria Railway Terminus, the Municipal Corporation and the Bombay Gymkhana. Land is at a premium in Mumbai and the Gymkhana holds the city’s only golf course.

The population of Mumbai is 18 million which in reality, our guide said, is more like 23 million. The people are all religious but the majority is Hindu, followed by Moslem and then Christian and Buddhist, etc. Sadly, 60% of the people live in slums as millions arrive from all over India seeking work in what she describes as a ‘developing city’. As a result, the infrastructure cannot fully support the population; buildings are in disrepair, traffic is horrendous and pollution is inescapable. For two years now the city has been building an underground railway system which our guide believes will relieve some of the congestion.

As in other Indian cities, the poor live alongside the rich and the most expensive house in the world is located here - built at a cost of over $2 billion. It is an enormous high-rise cantilevered building, architecturally designed by an American company towering above the smaller, crumbling apartment buildings that dot the city’s landscape. Mumbai’s tallest residential towers have 64 floors!

The Dhoby Ghat laundry is an enormous enterprise set on acres of land in the middle of the city. It is over 140 years old and employs 5-6,000 people, mostly from outside of Mumbai, who launder millions of items of clothing each week. On the way there we stopped in at the Mani Bhavan, now a museum, where Gandhi lived from 1917-1934 and where he launched civil disobedience in an effort to claim independence for India. He is indeed revered here.

Our final destination was the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sandrahalaya - or Prince of Wales Museum. An impressive historic building, it contains vast halls of amazing displays including sculpture, natural history, European paintings, a Chinese and Japanese gallery and even a children’s museum. We had 35 minutes, I could easily have spent a few hours. On the way back to the ship we passed by The Gateway of India, a famous landmark used in days gone by as the customs entrance to Mumbai from passengers of all types of ships.

And so we leave the heat of India bound for the heat of the Middle East!