Buying spices...
So after my little driving diversion in Tamil Nadu, I hopped over to the other side of India and have paid a visit to Cochin. A city in Kerala state, that was the center of the spice trade.
Before I forget... I've finally kicked this cold. It was brutal. My sinuses were under so much pressure that I was experiencing toothache type pain. I had run out of Dayquill because the combo Day-Night packs they give you have equal number of day and night pills. Too bad you need 2 doses in the day, and 1 at night. This is worse than the hotdogs in 10's and buns in 12's things... the medicine is sold in one box. When I got back to Chennai I bought some local drugs, and they made it all better. I was only in Chennai overnight, but the drugs, sleep and time all worked together to make me better before the flight to Cochin. That was a good thing, after a bad experience on the way back from New Orleans 2 years back, I never want to have sinus issues while boarding a plane again... it's almost a fate worse than death.
Unfortunately, on the way to the airport coming over here, I left my red knapsack in the back of the hotel car. Thankfully, the hotel ended up with the bag, and I was able to convince them to bend their rule by faxing them instructions to hand the bag over to one of the people that I know in Chennai, who I'll be seeing in Delhi tomorrow.
As a result of being separated from my bag, I'm temporarily without my laptop. You can imagine that I was getting a little bit worried when I didn't have the bag, and that my blood pressure came back to normal when I managed to get the bag picked up from the hotel. It'll all be back to normal by tomorrow.
I was originally, going to set off to Amritsar before the conference but Megan's little sister, Johanna, is in India, and we figured that we could meet up in Cochin. One of the issues with traveling alone is that meeting people can be a bit difficult (and sometimes the people that you meet can be just annoying), so I leapt at the chance to meet up with a friendly face.
I spent most of yesterday hanging out with Johanna and her friend Carolyn. I met the girls at their hotel, and we headed off to catch a ferry to another part of Cochin. Without a map of the city, I'm having some issues figuring out if the ferry took us to an island, or just to a peninsula, but that's really neither here nor there. We had lunch at some cute little artsy bistro, and then wandered around the old parts of Cochin. The area was built up by the Portuguese, and the buildings really show the influences (red roof tiles and all). We wandered through St. Francis Church, the oldest European Christian Church in India (and I think Asia). It was a really simple structure, that in many ways was beautifully elegant. From there we wandered around, and saw old Chinese designed fishing nets, which were originally brought to the area by Chinese traders well before the Portuguese came by. These cantilevered nets are pretty cool (and when I went back this afternoon I got to see them in action).
We also visited the synagogue here. That's right, there's a small Jewish population here, that's unfortunately diminished to about 4 families. The community was a lot stronger even 20 years ago, but lots of people have been enticed to move to Israel, so the community is faltering. It's kind of sad to see. The girls and I all realised that up until that point in time, none of us had been in a synagogue, and it was odd in some sense that it took us coming to India to see one.
To get to the synagogue, we wandered through the city (too stubborn to hop a rickshaw), and basically fell into some dumb luck to find it. On the way, I managed to find some of the historic spice shops that the locals still use. So, I've satisfied my desire to buy pepper. I have 1 kg of black peppercorns, 1 kg of white peppercorns, 500 g of cardamom pods and 500 g of cloves. I figure that I'm pretty well set up now.
I realise that I'm starting to get near the weight limit for my luggage. When I get to Delhi, I'll have to figure out how I'm getting all of this stuff home. I still wanted to buy a carpet while I was here too... This might take some creative distribution.
So tomorrow, I'm off to Delhi. I'm still waiting for the plane ticket, but it has apparently been issued, and now it's just a matter of delivery. The flight runs through Bombay, and is supposed to start at 8:30 and get me to Delhi by 12:55. By my count that's a 4:30 flight. I don't think that I get let off the plane in Bombay, so it might not be pleasant.
I hope that things are going well for everyone back home.
dilip
Before I forget... I've finally kicked this cold. It was brutal. My sinuses were under so much pressure that I was experiencing toothache type pain. I had run out of Dayquill because the combo Day-Night packs they give you have equal number of day and night pills. Too bad you need 2 doses in the day, and 1 at night. This is worse than the hotdogs in 10's and buns in 12's things... the medicine is sold in one box. When I got back to Chennai I bought some local drugs, and they made it all better. I was only in Chennai overnight, but the drugs, sleep and time all worked together to make me better before the flight to Cochin. That was a good thing, after a bad experience on the way back from New Orleans 2 years back, I never want to have sinus issues while boarding a plane again... it's almost a fate worse than death.
Unfortunately, on the way to the airport coming over here, I left my red knapsack in the back of the hotel car. Thankfully, the hotel ended up with the bag, and I was able to convince them to bend their rule by faxing them instructions to hand the bag over to one of the people that I know in Chennai, who I'll be seeing in Delhi tomorrow.
As a result of being separated from my bag, I'm temporarily without my laptop. You can imagine that I was getting a little bit worried when I didn't have the bag, and that my blood pressure came back to normal when I managed to get the bag picked up from the hotel. It'll all be back to normal by tomorrow.
I was originally, going to set off to Amritsar before the conference but Megan's little sister, Johanna, is in India, and we figured that we could meet up in Cochin. One of the issues with traveling alone is that meeting people can be a bit difficult (and sometimes the people that you meet can be just annoying), so I leapt at the chance to meet up with a friendly face.
I spent most of yesterday hanging out with Johanna and her friend Carolyn. I met the girls at their hotel, and we headed off to catch a ferry to another part of Cochin. Without a map of the city, I'm having some issues figuring out if the ferry took us to an island, or just to a peninsula, but that's really neither here nor there. We had lunch at some cute little artsy bistro, and then wandered around the old parts of Cochin. The area was built up by the Portuguese, and the buildings really show the influences (red roof tiles and all). We wandered through St. Francis Church, the oldest European Christian Church in India (and I think Asia). It was a really simple structure, that in many ways was beautifully elegant. From there we wandered around, and saw old Chinese designed fishing nets, which were originally brought to the area by Chinese traders well before the Portuguese came by. These cantilevered nets are pretty cool (and when I went back this afternoon I got to see them in action).
We also visited the synagogue here. That's right, there's a small Jewish population here, that's unfortunately diminished to about 4 families. The community was a lot stronger even 20 years ago, but lots of people have been enticed to move to Israel, so the community is faltering. It's kind of sad to see. The girls and I all realised that up until that point in time, none of us had been in a synagogue, and it was odd in some sense that it took us coming to India to see one.
To get to the synagogue, we wandered through the city (too stubborn to hop a rickshaw), and basically fell into some dumb luck to find it. On the way, I managed to find some of the historic spice shops that the locals still use. So, I've satisfied my desire to buy pepper. I have 1 kg of black peppercorns, 1 kg of white peppercorns, 500 g of cardamom pods and 500 g of cloves. I figure that I'm pretty well set up now.
I realise that I'm starting to get near the weight limit for my luggage. When I get to Delhi, I'll have to figure out how I'm getting all of this stuff home. I still wanted to buy a carpet while I was here too... This might take some creative distribution.
So tomorrow, I'm off to Delhi. I'm still waiting for the plane ticket, but it has apparently been issued, and now it's just a matter of delivery. The flight runs through Bombay, and is supposed to start at 8:30 and get me to Delhi by 12:55. By my count that's a 4:30 flight. I don't think that I get let off the plane in Bombay, so it might not be pleasant.
I hope that things are going well for everyone back home.
dilip
posted by Dilip Andrade at
7:29 a.m.
1 Comments:
(one plus one plus point five plus point five...) THREE KILOS! My God, man, that's WMD quantities of pepper!
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