APOLOGIES! AND FORT COCHIN WEDS. 22ND

Hi everybody

My apologies for the delay in publishing comments you've been kind enough to leave. I forgot to tick the box asking Blogger to prompt me by email each time a comment was left, awaiting approval. I've amended this now.

(Friday 24^th) we had an early Dinner so I could sit in our lovely cool room at the Radisson hotel and catch up on Blogposts. Sadly their internet/wifi was rubbish and it crashed and lost 4 posts I'd written.

Anybody who has tried to keep a Blog whilst travelling – with limited free time and 'iffy' internet access will know how frustrating it can be.

Writing posts is the easy bit as long as you do it fairly soon after each 'adventure' or you forget bits. The hard bit is downsizing photos to the size that Blogger will accept without charging. This may not be a problem for first-time bloggers, or those who haven't made too many posts – but our Indian travel blogs (this is the third) tag onto my arty website so I exceeded my 'free' allowance ages ago and have to ensure all current photos I post are reduced to a small size. All of this takes time and more patience that I normally have – David will attest to the fact that the air is generally pretty blue on these occasions.. One major change I've made is that I will now always write Blog posts in Word (or similar programme) and copy/paste to Blogger so I have a back up on the written stuff, if not the photos in future.

Fingers crossed, I hope to catch up tonight! 

The steam train post was the only one that didn't 'disappear' so it is out of sequence but I'm not going to mess with anything .... prior to the train journey we had other travel experiences which I'm going to add now.

FORT COCHIN WEDS 22ND

We arrived at Fort Cochin by taxi at Noon. We stayed at a boutique type hotel which basically means hotel with tiny rooms I think. But it was in a good location and had AirCon BLISS! The temperatures have been in the high 30s and its humid so very draining when sightseeing.

We walked to the famous Chinese Fishing boats but didn't spend long there as the tourist coaches had arrived so the touts/hawkers were being very persistent. I commented on last year's blog that the place is very much nicer early morning or late afternoon when the coaches have been and gone. The real activity takes place then with the fishing nets genuinely catching fish and the wholesalers auctioning the catches which are then filtered down to the retailers selling small quantities. When the tourists are around the nets are theatrically raised/lowered in order to attract customers to get closer/pay money to take photos.

Sadly the place looked much dirtier than we remembered. The monsoon rains failed this Winter and all the lakes/waterways in Kerala are depleted which may have added to the impression of 'run down'

Sorry for readers of last year's blog – I'm going to show more photos of the area (but not as many this time).