I'm a couple days behind and we are now in the "Backwaters" of Kumarakom Lake resort and still in the state of Kerala India.
So going back a couple days and this is from February 23 and 24 and Kochi aka Cochin, India.:
We have seen so many well decorated delivery trucks and I guess the drivers can decorate them however they want and a lot of the time it is their "home on wheels" and they sleep in the trucks - same as in the USA I have heard but we don't decorate!
I looked up in the hotel lobby and saw this dome and huge chandelier. A lot of stuff here is over the top and then we see more of the "bottom" and the real world all the time.
From the bus and yes these are living quarters and it is definitely the real world in India as they are all over.
This is the hotel grounds and one day they were doing a fashion photo shoot right here and it was really fun to watch. Since I wear my clothes a few times and it's 100 degrees here pretty sure I won't make the photo shoot now or ever!
This is the walk down the "hall" to breakfast and I have never been greeted, thanked and bowed to anywhere else in the world in all my life this often.
Tourists are needed here! Every hotel when we have driven out in our bus the staff has lined up to wave us off and as our tour guide sometimes says "Look at their big smiles - they are get to get rid of us in his heavily Indian accented English"
Only an accidental fall in the water would get me to step foot in these waters. I might be paranoid but there's a lot of stuff in the water. There is a big effort on to "Clean India" and there are billboards all over. The air and ground pollution is so so much better in the south than in Delhi - amazing difference.
Another delivery truck I'm sure waiting to load up with something!
In the Dutch Palace museum this is a portrait of "Royal Babies wearing jewels" - if you click you may be able to read the lines below.
This one says "Women from the Royal Family in traditional attire" - which means topless and no problem with it. Maybe we are way too prudish at home but it would be hard to change.
My big shopping excursion and I did well - lots of my favorite spices and some Indian coffee beans. The guide says the best beans are from Ethiopia but I can get those at Costco so why not Indian.
And the wealth in the state of Kerala is shown in this gold rickshaw. The income differences from north to south are huge and here the literacy rate is near 100% - probably better than the US. And a lot of money and I think because farm growing and fresh fishing are big industries and exports.
We did spot a cruise ship coming in - not my thing and maybe never!
Now I have heard Vasco de Gama stories over and over again as he arrived in India from Portugal. His remains were moved from here to the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon which is where I was a couple years ago with my Globetrotting Grannies group! He was from Lisbon.
This was a sign on a pew in a Catholic church that we visited. There are tons of Catholics churches and schools here so the missionaries must have been busy.
In Cochin priorly known as Kochi there is a huge British evidence in the beautiful homes where the rich people lived after gaining wealth from the famous "Spice Route" which was fought over by Portugese, Dutch, British and probably other countries - lotta money!
So many street signs have "God's Own Country" under the sign.
This was the security office of our huge hotel compound - yup that's it and the door was open and nobody home but you can leave a message in the notebook.
I see these cage things indicating police presence in every city and I must say the police are all over. There was a terrorist bombing just north of Delhi 2 days after we arrived and it's all over the news and very heavy and slow airport security measures. It is the Pakistan/India confrontations.
Seriously this was set up with 200 chairs, a stage for entertainment and huge buffet place for an engagement party - yes not a wedding or a fancy ball just two people going to get married.
Next up a river cruise and it was so awesome to see the sights from the water instead of the air and land.
I think he said these were egrets and we say hundreds of them all over the place.
The "blue boats" all over too and they are real fishing boats and they are always fishing.
The sun setting with a cargo ship and the Chinese fishing nets in the photo. We watched the nets pulled up a couple times and one caught one fairly large fish so we cheered for the guy.
Bringing the fish up with the big net and yes it takes a couple guys to pull the ropes up by hand.
This is women and children and maybe after school? But they do love it when we wave and take photos. I threw a kiss a couple times and I got 50 kisses back and the moms were teaching the little kids how to throw a kiss.
This is was a demolished part of a wall at the jetty where our boat landed and it was awesome.
Click on the next photos and it is a protest movement of some kind and the words are quite easy to understand and maybe a little "R" rated?
We had the pleasure of attending a cooking class and this instructor was awesome and started doing this after her retirement. Then of course we ate all the food after we got a look around the house.
The dining room had an air conditioning unit and fans but a lot of the stoves and kitchen equipment were outside in the heat and humidity next to the cars in the garage. This soup was super good.
This was in the house and their are Hindu temples and Christian artifacts and prayer places everywhere.
So still catching up!
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