We passed through the Ten Degree Channel at the south end of the Andaman Islands, halfway between Thailand and India.

Arriving in the port of Kochin in southern India; Chinese fishing nets line the shore to the left

These soldiers were protecting the dock—just making sure the tourists were safe!
A native band welcomed us to India

Even the harbour’s porpoises seemed to be welcoming us

Squeekie aboard our harbour tour boat

The Aspinwall spice warehouse—I am curious as to what is its history!

Curious bystanders watched as our tour boats went by.

A Chinese fishing net in the down position . . .

. . . and the net being lifted up.

Fishermen intent on operating their netting technology.

Fishermen working in their entrapment nets further up the harbour.

Fishing boats lined the harbour.

This Christian church prominently located at harbourside illustrates the long Christian connection to this part of India.

The Bolgatty Palace of the old Rajah is now a hotel; the honeymoon suites are under the trees at far right.

In another arm of the harbour are new apartments, some of them rather unusual looking, and a yacht tie-up area . . .

. . . the yacht in the previous picture was clearly undertaking some repairs; had they sailed to India from far away?

The training sailing ship of the Indian Naval Service.

Our tour boat also gave us a nice view of the mighty Rotterdam docked in the harbour.

A girl waved at us as our tour bus motored us back to the Rotterdam.

As we left Cochin harbour, the westering sun illuminated the fishing nets.

Fifty-ninth day (Thursday, March 19, 2009)-- Yesterday we sailed away from Thailand and Southeast Asia. Today we are traveling west across the Andaman Sea, that eastern portion of the Indian Ocean which lies between the peninsula of Southeast Asia and the peninsula of India. Sometime in the early afternoon we passed through the Andaman Islands, specifically through “Ten Degree Channel,” which lies between Little Andaman Island and Car Nicobar Island. After this the Rotterdam slipped into the Bay of Bengal. India is getting closer. . . .

Other than this essay into navigation, this was just a typical at sea day, writing (and working with our growing collection of pictures) up in the Crow’s Nest into the early afternoon, with a break for the noontime trivia contest. My trivia group, called the “Orphans,” is a nice bunch of people who are very different. Susan, who pulled the group together in the first place, is a retired airline stewardess who has traveled extensively around the world, even before she began cruising. Wally is a numismatist who is an interesting fellow with an amazing knowledge of coins and economies. Elaine is retired from the fashion industry, and is recently married (five years ago) to Tim, himself a retired Navy Captain. Janet, who often participates with her quiet but very nice husband John, is from the tiny town of Salmon Arm in British Columbia. Her husband is on the volunteer fire department, and apparently also does some religious work, but what exactly I am not sure. Janet is a high-energy and very talkative woman who is interesting to be around and who is very knowledgeable about movies, plays, and literature. Irmgard is a German woman (old enough to remember the war, but she does not ever speak of it) who now lives in eastern Canada. She cruises often and appears to have made trivia a passionate hobby. And then there is me, awful with movies and popular music, whose one redeeming contribution appears to be my knowledge of geography.

Squeekie and I had an interesting lunch today on the aft deck with Captain Olav, who invited us to join him. We had an interesting chat about a range of topics from pirates to parking cars. Tonight we had French Dinner in the Pinnacle. We were placed at our regular table, and joined by a new couple, Al and Joan from Illinois. The dinner was a multiple course excursion into French cuisine, ranging from frogs legs appetizers to crème brulee dessert, supported by wines and concluded with a cheese plate. Overall, it was a WONDERFUL meal.


Sixtieth Day (Friday, March 20, 2009)-- This was another day spent mostly up in the Crow’s Nest. Squeekie and I are beginning to really enjoy the at sea days in between ports. When we first looked at the itinerary of this cruise we were concerned that the long stretches of at sea days—some of them three or four days in a row, and the one seven day stint in the South Pacific—might prove boring, but that has not turned out to be the case. Indeed, we have come to like these slower times at sea to rest up from our usually very intense days doing stuff in the ports. We stayed up in the Crow’s Nest nearly all day, except for the trivia break; Squeek doing Edison work and I catching up on the blog and working on the pictures.

At dinner tonight—it was formal—we were joined at our table by Henry and Jan Dickson from the U.K. Henry is the Second Electrician and Jan is currently a “spouse on board” although she has worked for Holland-America in past contracts. We had a wonderful time with these interesting people, and enjoyed such a nice conversation with them that we were the last table to leave the dining room, not until after 10:30 pm!

Sixty-first Day (Saturday, March 21, 2009)-- This was yet another day at sea with what has become the conventional (and welcomed) schedule of events. There was nothing much to write about today, because writing was just about all I did. . . .

Sixty-second Day (Sunday, March 22, 2009)-- We awoke this morning to the interest and joy of seeing a new country, India. Squeekie had gotten up earlier, but Rotterdam was just entering the harbour mouth of Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) when I went out on Deck Six forward to watch our arrival. Perhaps the most interesting thing in the harbour mouth was that on both sides there were located Chinese-style fishing nets. These nets are big things supported by a complex framework of poles, ropes, and weights by which the fishing net could be dropped and held underwater for a time and then lifted back, bringing whatever up in the net. We watched them go up and down, and photographed them as we glided in to the harbour.

When we docked I was surprised (but not too much so) to see armed soldiers standing by guarding the entrances to the dock where Rotterdam had tied up. I guess that between the fears of Tamil insurrection and concerns over the mess in Pakistan, the Indian military is rather much at ready these days. . . . Squeekie took what I thought to be a very probing picture of an armed soldier standing right next to a sign broadcasting Kochin’s love of tourism. There was also a welcoming band of drummers and native dancers, however.

Now for a bit of history-- The port city of Kochi (formerly Cochin) where Rotterdam landed is now a part of the state of Kerala in southwest India, but formerly was the capital of a Princely State during the time of the British rule of India. (A Princely State was one where a native ruler—a Rajah—was the titular head of state, although under British “guidance.”) There no longer is a rajah here, but his palace in town is now an interesting museum. Cochin has the finest harbour south of Mumbai (Bombay) on the west coast of India, and today is a base and training centre for the Indian Navy. Cochin was an important port back into ancient times, and is believed to have been one of the places where Greek and Roman traders came to purchase pepper (Ancient India’s own spice) and other spices. Indeed, the spice trade (both local spices and in-transit products from other places) dominated the long history of this region, which was an important port on the sea-borne trade route between Southeast Asia, Arabia, and the Mediterranean. This led to a community of Greeks and Romans existing here in the first century AD (recall that Saint Thomas conducted his apostleship in India), and Arabs coming to dominate the town by the eighth century AD. A huge amount of spice traffic passed through Cochin en route to Arabia, the Mediterranean, and, ultimately, Europe.

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama visited the city in 1502, and Portuguese control quickly was established with the construction of Fort Kochi. Da Gama died in Cochin in 1515 on his third visit to India, and he was buried at Saint Francis Church, although his body was returned to Portugal in 1538. (This church, which still stands on Church Road in the Colonial District—it is India’s oldest European-built church—originally was named San Antonio Church, dedicated to the patron saint of Portugal, but later was converted to Protestant Christianity by the Dutch and renamed to honour Saint Francis.) When the Portuguese expelled Jews from their nation in the sixteenth century, some of the exiles settled in Mattancheri, one of the districts of Cochin, where some of their descendants remain to this day. The Dutch took control of Cochin in 1663, to establish an intermediate port to protect their trade routes to the Spice Islands (now Indonesia). When the revolutionary French conquered the Netherlands in 1795, the British quickly snapped up the Dutch colonial possessions (which the French navy was incapable of seizing); they took charge of Cochin in 1795.

Cochin sits upon a coastal alluvial plain watered by rivers coming out of the Western Ghat Mountains. This fertile plain yields abundant crops (including but certainly not limited to coconuts, rice, cashews, and mangos); pepper and cinnamon were spices which also have grown here since ancient times. (Remember that pepper is the one spice that originated in India, not Indonesia.) This area retains its agricultural importance despite the fact that it also has one of India’s highest population densities.

Well, I guess that’s enough of a history and geography lesson, so back to our day-- Our “adventure” in Cochin was simple, a tour of the very large harbour by boat. It was an interesting way to taste the complex history and cultural intricacy of the area. We took a bus just a few hundred yards to the jetty where we boarded the boat that would take us on a tour of the harbour. Almost immediately curious porpoises came to investigate our boat, and I was very fortunate to get a picture of one of them looking up through the water before he darted away. The tour boat, which was small enough to bring us close down to the water, very much unlike our view from the Rotterdam, carried us first past the old colonial district, known on maps as “Fort Cochin.” Lining the harbourfront was evidence of the town’s spice-trade past and its shipbuilding tradition (see pictures). Of particular interest to me was a waterfront warehouse building we passed which clearly dated back to the eighteenth century if not earlier. The name “Aspinwall” was emblazoned on its front, but I now no more about it. Perhaps when I return home and have access to good libraries once again, I will be able to learn something about the business which operated this facility.

Near the Aspinwall building was an area that clearly once had been a shipbuilding facility for wooden ships of the type used by Europeans in the eighteenth century. Squeekie photographed some views of native people standing at the waterfront viewing our tour boat as it motored past. This area was the old Colonial District, and despite some newer buildings scattered here and there, it retained a great deal of the feel of an earlier time in its building architecture and low skyline.

Next our boat came to the mouth of the harbour, where the calm waters of the protected area eased into the waves of the Indian Ocean. Dominant in this area, on both sides of the harbour entrance, were the Chinese fishing nets (or dipping nets), so called because the technology apparently was introduced from China as long ago as the fourteenth century by Chinese merchants coming to India to trade for pepper. As I described earlier in this entry, these nets are permanent structures cantilevered out over the water and operated by a complex system of pulleys and weights. They are dropped down into the water and submerged for a period of time, and then lifted, bringing up whatever was unfortunate enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, so to speak. As our boat motored slowly by we had good opportunity to watch these devices in action, although from our distance it was nearly impossible to see if anything was brought up. Fishing is still a very important industry in the region as was evident not just by the Chinese nets but also by the numerous, usually very colourful, fishing boats lining the harbour. In addition to these, there were a number of pole-and-net traps in various arms of the harbour where canoe-loads of men would go out and draw up whatever they could from the netting—another ancient technology still performed in India.

As we passed by the northern side of the harbour we passed by a prominently situated Christian church, painted a gleaming white and obviously calling all to come in. I wonder if its location at harbourside was an attempt to bring in sailors, who were in times past notoriously un-Christian.

In one of the northern arms of the harbour lies man-made Bolgatty Island, and on this sits a structure that once was a summer palace for the local Rajah. Bolgatty Palace is now a fine hotel, and out at the southern point of the island, remotely located among some lovely trees, are two small raised house structures marketed as the honeymoon suites. East of Bolgatty Island in yet another arm of the harbour we saw some modern apartment high rises; it was possible to tell they were residential rather than business in nature because from the verandahs of some of them hung laundry put out to dry—not always an easy task in this high-humidity environment.

Finally, in the far eastern arm of the harbour lay the navy yard of the Indian Naval Service. We could not get to close to that facility, of course, but Squeekie and I with our telephoto lenses were able to get some pictures of the ships which lay at anchor there. The one which interested me the most was tied up between two frigate-style motor ships—it was a sailing vessel, but I haven’t been able to learn anything about it yet. Oh, for un-time-charged access to the internet!

After our return to the Rotterdam we spent the remainder of the afternoon aboard, believing that this had been enough of an introduction to India. “All Aboard” was at 4:30 in the afternoon, and Rotterdam sailed our past the Chinese fishing nets into the westering sun. The day after tomorrow we will arrive in Mumbai!