Today I am in class, watching movies and recovering from India. I am glad I have a lot of time until the next port because India is going to be a long reflection. So much happened, good and bad. Okay, here I go:
March 6th
We arrived in Cochin, India at around 8am. Me and my friends all had different itineraries for India. Before SAS I joined fellow SASers in a Facebook group who all wanted to see the Taj and Varanasi in India so we all bought flight tickets and more as a group. Half of the group kind of branched off and planned everything else by themselves and the other half had no idea what was going on. Me being one of those people. Luckily I was not the only one though and me and 3 other girls were in the same situation. So Amee, Elizabeth and Liz all decided we would travel together, although we didn’t have a bo in our group we were still glad to have 3 other girls to travel with. On the first day in Cochin our flight to Delhi was supposed to leave at 8pm.
Me and Amee decided to travel in Cochin together on the first day since were on the same time crunch. The airport is 1 hour away from the port so we planned on leaving around 5:30 to catch our flight. Our first stop was to get some lunch and some Wi-Fi. As soon as leaving the ship we were bombarded with tuktuk drivers (3 wheeled car thing) trying to get us to use their services for 150 rupees per person (3 dollars) for the full day. On the ship though we were told to just ignore them and go to the ferry because it was 2 rupees to the main area. We got sucked in through and decided it was worth it because the driver will wait for us after our food and would be able to help us out with what is in the area. Driving around it was instantly clear of the poverty in India and of the culture differences. We laughed at first of the hundreds of cows roaming the streets and blocking traffic, but overall they are an actual health and safety hazard. We found a restaurant with internet and first we looked up our flight status and found out it was 3 hours delayed until about 11:30pm. Then we made sure our other reservations were alright. Everything was good. We ate and then our tuktuk driver took us to local Chinese fishing market nets where they try and catch fish with most of the time no luck. After we went shopping and I bought some India cloths and scarves for really cheap (3 outfits for 30 bucks!). we then were bombarded with government shops that the tuktuk driver had us go into, we found out it is because for each tourist they bring to these shops the driver gets money for us just walking in, money for how long we look and a percentage from what we buy. So we ended up going into 3 of these which they all have really nice things but it’s all pretty expensive.
Around 4pm we headed back to the ship so we could shower (god knows when our next shower would be) and eat dinner on the ship to save money. I showered, finished packing and relaxed before dinner. It was already a long day and we had a 3.5 hour flight leaving at 11:30, I knew it was going to be a long next few days. I slept for like 30 minutes, we headed to dinner and then caught a taxi to the airport. The airport is different than any of the ones I have ever been to. Before you can even enter you have to show your ticket and ID to enter into the airport. It was interesting how tightly secure they were, then to enter into the check-in area we had to do the same. We checked in, went through security and waited for our flight with other SASers. On the flght there was hardly anyone so I was able to lay across all of the seats and sleep or a good 2 hours until we pulled into Delhi at around 3:30am.
Day 2 coming soon
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