Port 23 Cochin India

1.This
was our welcome as we docked at Cochin!

2. Dolphins
3. Our crew buys fish for lunch
4. Fishing nets
5. Nimmy & her neices demonstrate how to prepare fish cooked in coconut milk. Yummy!

While in the Indian Ocean, the day before landing in India, Captain Dag stopped the ship and had a small crew, in a Zodiac boat, approach local fishermen. They traded several cases of whiskey and three T-shirts for the catch of tuna. (This has happened in the past! But, sometimes the fishermen want money.) As this was happening, a huge school of about 70 dolphins raced, arching in couplets and threesomes through the air, as they passed us on their unknow quest. All the passengers were watching and we all oooed & awed. A great sight.

Our tour in Cochin was provide by the Ensemble Travel Co.negotiated this world cruise for the Our agent Gloria at the Travel Store had booked our trip through the Ensemble Co. I'm not sure exactly how this works, but there is a couple on board representing the Ensemble Co and they have organized a couple of cocktail parties, had dinner with us to get acquainted and, in general, look after us. They booked this tour (at no expense to us) around the Kerala region, one of 28 states in India. Cochin dominates as the oldest port on this west coast. There are inland waterways with rice fields and a rich spice industry that dates to prehistoric trade with Phoenicians and Romans.

On that note, we were taken to the private home of Nimmy Paul, a professional cooking instructor, and her husband a retired stock broker. Their extended family, including nephews and nieces, demonstrated how to cook fish in coconut milk, yams in spices and rice with vegetables. This was in the Kerala, Syrian and Christian style. Barbara has the small cookbook and the menu for what we were served. We explored their home and were then served on the sprawling lawn, under cover, seated at lovely decorated tables. It was for most of us a most compatible dining experience in spicy Southern Indian cuisine. Other sites of the tour
visited included: the grave of Vasco de Gama, the Portuguese Explorer; a sixteenth century Jewish synagogue, in an area officially named “Jewtown” for the past 400 years, but now contains only 13 Jews and the active shore fishing industry, that utilizes an ancient Chinese technique of cantilevered nets, which are lowered into the river- ocean water for five to ten minutes then raised with the catch. 70 per cent of the profit goes to the fisherman as they are unionized.

After a sea day, we are off to the incomparable Taj Mahal and the Red Fort, in an overnight trip to Agra.