Taj Mahal

First Day Tuesday 14th March 2023

 

At last, I have a belated opportunity to make an entry covering our experience in India. It is a longer entry than usual, of course, because for those 3 days in India I had left the laptop on the ship and for long stretches in the day I had no broadband connection.

 

Albina and I arrived for rollcall at the Neptune Theatre at 9am, but for separate journeys. Mine was a 3 day journey to Delhi and Agra, and finally a return to the ship in Kochi on the third day, just before its final departure from India. Albina's excursion was a one-day visit to Colonial Mumbai. She would then follow this up in the next two days by two one day excursions to Goa and to Kochi respectively. Already the boat staff warned us of a different approach by Indian bureaucracy to what we had been told the previous day. Albina would have her passport inspected by immigration and then retained by the ship's staff to present jointly with other passengers on the eve of the next trip. She was then to retain a photocopy of her passport to display each time she went on one of her Indian excursions. In my case, I could retain my passport for the 3-day tour as I would need to show it for each airport crossing and each hotel reservation.

 

There was a total of four coaches on our 3-day tour, each with some twenty or so passengers. There was an additional complication in that our group, which was Group Number 4, would fly in a separate plane from Mumbai to Delhi, as Fred Olsen could not get enough seats on the first flight. Got the story so far? Except that there was an even further twist, in that for three of the passengers in Group 4, there was no room on the second flight as well. So, as these three could just about be squeezed onto the first flight, they were initially separated from their original group. Of course, one of these three passengers happened to be (you've guessed it) me. I therefore began the tour in the coach with Group 1, another passenger in Group 2, and the third passenger in Group 3.  

 

So, with me ensconced temporarily in Group 1, our coach began making its way through the crowded, noisy, colourful, littered, jittery, part elegant, part ugly streets of Mumbai towards the international airport. The city openly displays both the most expensive and the most poverty-stricken districts , where, out of a total reputed population of 24 million, 70% live in the slums. These are often interspersed and in open view of the mansions of billionaires and Bollywood stars. The slum in Mumbai is in fact the largest in Asia. Mumbai celebrates its poverty and its dirt as much as its riches and middle class prosperity. Massive attempts are currently being made by the government and the city council to rehouse the slum dwellers, but the project is too overwhelming and many of the slum dwellers feel more attached to their little shacks, even though no bigger than a billionaire's bathroom. To many of them the slums are part of their life, their family, their work. To them it is a community. On the way our coach passed a most hideous high-rise building, built like a series of boxes loosely piled on top of each other, which apparently was worth £2 billion, and yet it was within just four blocks of the most dire tin roof shacks covered with drooping plastic sheets for walls, outside of which some children were playing alongside an open sewer. Other extended waterside slums were clearly visible as the coach turned to the magnificent Rajiv Ghandi Sea Driveway to cross the bay to the northern part of the city. The slums include families who have lived there for several generations, but they are also full of recently arrived hopeful migrants from other parts of rural and provincial India looking for a miracle, or even just a job in the recesses of India's second largest city. Of course, slums are not just dwellings. Those rugged dirty streets include artisans, workshops, multistorey flats, schools and places of worship. Many have electricity but lack proper clean water. As in Rio de Janeiro there is even an organized tourist industry making money out of displaying this wretchedness to rich pampered tourists anxious afterwards to express their pious sense of outrage at what they see.

 

But hygiene is the subject of the most intense state sponsored publicity with posters urging people to wash and stay clean. When we reached the magnificent Mumbai airport all the washrooms that I and my colleagues came in contact with were  spotlessly clean. Just try to leave the bathroom after your session without washing your hands. The bathroom attendant immediately blocks your exit and points politely to the wash basins.  However, this is selective. Hygiene is promoted to where the long arm of the state, or of prestigious private institutions such as hotels can reach, but still fails to reach those private and public areas that fall between the cracks of rich private property and the neighbouring street scene.

 

Once at the airport, after having our luggage and our personal documentation screened for the nth time, I decided on a whimsy to change just 10 U.S. dollars into rupees. I had to fill in a form to make my request, and provide my passport of course, which front two pages the clerk then proceeded to photocopy, along with a copy of the visa and the entry stamp opposite. Then he counted out the money in 200 rupee notes, but instead of the 800 rupees I expected, I received only 600, the rest having gone on the administrative cost. The transaction lasted almost 10 minutes after I had finally signed a stamped copy document confirming my agreement to accept the outcome of this miniscule monument to worthless bureaucracy. Still, we had ample time to walk around the comfortable and sprawling airside lounge. I was looking for a guidebook for Delhi or Agra, but all I could find was a massive 1256 page tourist guidebook covering the whole of India, a sort of War and Peace and the Complete Works of Shakespeare all in one. Yet another additional weight to add to our luggage at our eventual departure. Being in India, I also had to buy that beautifully illustrated Indian spiritual classic that every home should possess - a shortened illusrated version of the Kama Sutra.

 

The flight by Indigo Airlines in an Airbus 321 was comfortable. I was in the back seat of the plane with two ladies, Mary and Laureen, who like me were being tossed about between different groups and different flights. Indigo Airlines is one of those many private airlines in India that I had never even heard of, yet when we arrived at Delhi International Airport, our airside terminal featured an almost exclusive array of the blue and white coloured Indigo planes. This is part of the ever-growing modernized India, where the lives of the rich and of the white collar middle earners, are truly impressive. At 1.4 billion India is now the most populous state on the planet, having surreptitiously overtaken China in the last couple of years without most people really noticing. The government is investing massively in infrastructure projects, especially airports, new expressways, trains, and city metro systems. India is a world power in the fields of information technology, as well as prestigious space projects, as well as the massive clean water projects in the cities.

 

New Delhi is a brash example of the new and old India. It is like a vaster version of a garden city but topped with pollution, while seven lane traffic bottlenecks of cars and motorbikes churn away in tree lined avenues. The overall area is covered with chequered squares like Barcelona, punctuated with the most graceful roundabouts adorned with exquisite trees and walkways, still also sucking in the polluted air. This was all British built from the previous century. Ministries, institutes, museums, ministerial palaces and embassies are to be found here, the pavements are swept each day and the fallen leaves are placed into large open trucks, thus allowing the top layers of leaves to defiantly flutter back onto the roadway. The presidential palace, marked with a high dome, was constructed as the residence of the British Viceroy. The front of the Air Ministry is embellished with three fighter planes. Much of this area is more security conscious, with no possibility of a coach stopping for photo opportunities, and restrictions on photographing the military or armed policemen. Somewhat reminiscent of Egypt in this regard. We were forbidden for instance to close the curtains on our coach windows while driving through the metropolitan area. Unlike Mumbai, the rich and poor areas are not so juxtaposed so closely to each other, and most of the slum-dwellers are employed within the established city infrastructure. However, you still have the phenomenon of beautiful gardens to private mansions or embassies, or spotless public parks with clipped lawns, intersected by narrower passageways or canal pathways smothered in litter and inhabited by stray dogs.

 

We passed the extensive relatively new Akshardam Temple, the largest Hindu place of worship in Delhi. Next to it there is the majestic symmetrical mausoleum of the second Moghul Emperor Humayun. It was a precursor historically and architecturally to his great grandson’s Taj Mahal. We arrived at the Holiday Inn on the outskirts of the city. I and two other ladies were due to change horses here. That is, we were to rejoin the Number 4 Group coach which had caught a later flight from Mumbai. Alas, we had a long wait, at least an hour, before our coach arrived. By the time the new arrivals had eaten their dinner, and the three of us had packed our bags on the new coach, it was 10 o'clockin the evening. We now had a new guide, Ajay, who was very knowledgeable and could address us in a loud and clear voice.  At his side was the charming and lovely Shiri, also Indian, who I got to know well as she worked in the main shop on the Borealis. It was already past midnight when we arrived tired and irritable at the Cristal Sarolare Hotel. Imagine how pleased we were, when Ajay announced that he would wake us at 5am so we could also start at 6am the next morning to see the Taj in the early morning light.

..

Second Day. Wednesday 16th March 2023

 

Sure enough, the room phone rang at 5am. I was already awake and in the bathroom. That's because I was still living with the after effects of the treatment to reduce the swelling in my legs. Well, the system was working, my legs were no longer so bloated, but the excess water had to go somewhere. Consequently, for the last few nights I had been getting up at night five or six times, to get rid of that excess water. The effect on my sleep pattern and now on my daytime drowsiness was considerable. I prepared myself quickly until I realized that I could not find my mobile phone anywhere in the room. Panic. Where had I left it? I remembered I was still playing about with it on the coach. Could it still be there? I rushed downstairs where the others were already gathering. I checked with the driver and with Ajay. Neither could confirm they had seen the phone in the coach. In grim desperation I had to join the coach party without my precious phone. My mind was in turmoil as we travelled into the grounds of the Taj Mahal at 6 o'clock in the morning.

 

The coach dropped us within half a mile of the east entrance. Following that we mounted two electric People carriers with unprotected sides. These drove at great speed through some sharp chicanes to the very front entrance of the grounds. We proceeded into the grounds with prepaid tickets, men on the left, ladies on the right. Nothing religious about that division. Simply, that everyone had to be checked by security, of the right gender of course. Once together, we followed into the meticulously laid out first courtyard and turned right towards a reddish coloured brick building with an ornate gate.  Anywhere else this gate would have been an object of interest in its own right. But what drew our attention as we walked through that gate, was the peek view of a white building beyond it. We were finally through for an uninterrupted view of our goal. All I could say was, Wow!

 

I had already described this moment on my Facebook page. "The most exquisite and harmonious architectural masterpiece on the planet, a dreamlike construct of elegant symmetry in white marble. It was built over 22 years by 20,000 artisans, as an act of atonement for the misplaced love of his beloved Mumtaz by the selfish Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan, who had demanded that she give birth to 13 children once every 10 months, until she died in labour." In this one statement I had already encompassed all I could feel at the time. My sense of wonderment at this architectural masterpiece, my knowledge of the sweat and tears that went into planning and constructing it, the sense of sacrifice of the exploited woman popping out babies on a conveyor belt, and the sense of guilt by a selfish monarch to whom it suddenly dawned, albeit too late, that love was not just a one-way street. Perhaps it left his sense of guilt expatiated, but it left his country near bankrupt. It forced his son, the seventh Moghul Emperor, Aurangzeb, to seize the throne and imprison his father in a palace from which he could gaze on his beautiful creation until he died and was buried alongside her.

 

However, Jahan’s folly left us with this masterpiece. Perfect symmetry, meticulous artistry, presented on a vast scale. Despite my concern about my missing phone, I was overwhelmed by the impact of the marvel I was seeing. Ajay was busy giving us details of the materials used, as well as giving us a version of how the building came about. Still half awake and still catching up on the dreams in which we had been immersed when the sharp wakeup call came, we all watched the building from afar across a long ornamental pond, and we listened entranced to his explanations. All, that is, except for Richard, one of our less aware members who, after noting down Ajay's comments and statistics in his notebook, asked quite seriously, "So what did this gentleman do for a living?" "He was an emperor", we all called out in chorus. "Yes, but how did he get the money for this?" "All emperors have money," Ajay explained. "He stole it, or took it in taxation from his people." "What a silly man," was Richard's concluding comment. It was also exactly the same comment I overheard, this time about him, not Jahan, from two of the ladies in our group. As the guy was gay and had been telling me earlier in no uncertain terms, how much he had fancied one of the young male Borealis staff on an alternative coach, and had expressed surprise that I had been married to the same woman for 50 years, I could only conclude he did not understand how any man could love a woman so much.

 

How can I express what I saw, writ large, on that massive pedestal, which ensured that the backdrop of the Taj was always sky? I could imagine a delicious cake covered with white icing. Or perhaps a white chocolate box surrounded by four vertical little white Christmas crackers. Each of the four identical 40 metre minarets could be viewed as rockets ready to shoot into the sky. Whatever feeling it evoked, it was one of admiration and esteem. The white marble actually appeared to be translucent. The white marble walls were inlaid with semi-precious stones, including onyx, topaz, lapis lazuli, mother of pearl, and some 30 other stones in bright different colours. The surface, both inside and out, is covered with quotes from the Koran in flowing black calligraphy, and with ornate coloured patterns, mostly of plants and flowers, which cover both the large central recess visible at the front, and the surrounding four recesses on the wall around it. These same identical features appear on the remaining three walls of the building, thus forming a perfect cube. The building is topped with a perfectly symmetrical bulbous shaped dome and surrounded on each corner by four smaller domes with latticed windows. As you gaze at the building you notice amazing details. For instance, all four minarets are each leaning slightly away from the main building, as if to avoid collapsing on it in case of an earthquake. Also, you notice that the recesses on each side of the building are not just blank walls. They have latticed windows allowing hundreds of tiny shafts of light into the inside of the mausoleum. Then you notice that each such latticed wall inside the recesses is carved from one piece of marble. When you finally enter barefoot by a steep staircase, like a humble pilgrim, and venture inside of the mausoleum, you find, half hidden behind a further marble lattice screen, the tombs of the sorrowful emperor and his exploited spouse in beautiful carved sepulchres. These are surmounted by the huge empty vault of the dome high up above the building. It helps that there is no photography at all inside. The hushed voices and the narrow shafts of light pouring in through the latticed windows lend a sublime reverence to the experience.

 

After leaving the inside of the mausoleum, you can step outside onto the raised platform around the building, look up once more on to each white recessed edifice, stare up to the tip of the nearest minaret, and you can think to yourself: Can anything in this world be as perfect as this sublime construction. Then you look around you. At one side is the Yamuna River, a tributary of the Ganges. On the left and right of you are too identical red buildings constructed at the same time to complement the Taj. One was a mosque for local people. The other was constructed simply to match it visually on the other side of the Taj. Looking back to the earlier gateway from which we came, your eyes follow the line of the ornamental long pond and on the attractive paths alongside it. At one point they too branch out to two more equally symmetrical so-called water palaces. One of these is now a museum. Everywhere there is symmetry with mathematical precision on such a grand scale that it reminds you of the equally exciting mile long view in Paris from the Louvre looking west through the gardens of the Tulieries, the central obelisk of Place de La Concorde, the Arc de Triomphe, and the ominous shape of the more modern Defense structure beyond. The Taj Mahal and its garden surrounds are an unrepeatable perfect synthesis of art and science, of beauty and logic, inspired by love and faith. Although it looks so delicate and vulnerable, the surface is still made of the hardest marble. Yet it is cleaned lovingly like a precious gem with a special blend of soil, cereal, milk and lime. Still entranced, I walked back with the others to the electric people carriers, and then eventually to our coach

Then I remembered my lost phone, and my agony returned. All this time I had taken no pictures. On returning to the hotel, I rushed back to my room. Amazingly, I found my phone. It had camouflaged itself by lying face up on the black bedside cabinet. I felt such relief, but also such a fool, particularly as I had involved others in searching for it. I hastily apologized to those whom I had involved in looking for it.

 

Then after breakfast we headed off to our next visit. This was the massive Red Fort in Agra. We approached the south gate. This was another hugely impressive building, this time radiating strength and security, rather than beauty and light. It had been constructed by the third Moghul Emperor, Akbar the Great. There are three levels of defensive walls built of red sandstone. Entry on a hot humid morning like today requires the massive effort of climbing upwards along a steep winding path leading through three successive heavily protected gates, each placed higher than the previous one. Consequently, capturing the first gate still left you exposed and unable to follow through directly to the next gate. The last stage, after the second gate, was particularly steep. It was too much for one of our passengers, an elderly gentleman, carrying two sticks, with weak ankles, who was sesperately using the remaining strength in his legs to keep walking. On the ship I never saw him using the lift, always the stairs. Here the driver had found a wheelchair for him and pushed him up the steep path, but I could see he was nearly overwhelmed by the task. 

Beyond the gate we came across a large court surrounded on each side by massive inner red sandstone walls and on the remaining side dominated by an elegantly carved and columned audience hall in which the Emperor could listen to the complaints and concerns of his subjects and mete out justice. Behind that audience chamber was the palace of Akbar's aesthete grandson Shah Jahan, where he could enjoy his massive harem of 1000 women. Not that Akbar had any less women in his harem within the bare walls of the original fortress. The palace section had its somewhat smaller court which was the delightfully and colourfully planted garden where all the ladies could meet, discuss beauty treatments and pregnancies, and sort out their differences in intrigue and slander. The palace was again laid out in that wonderful white marble with relief carvings and with semi-precious stones. It was here that Shah Jahan was eventually isolated and imprisoned by his own son, and from where he could look out at his beloved Taj Mahal barely two miles away, dreaming of when he could join her.

 

After the second visit we stopped at the Marble Art Palace, to find out how the white marble inlay is performed by today's master craftsmen. They keep secret the name of the ingredient which integrates the stones with the marble. I was interested by the claim that the Makrana white marble, excavated in Rajasthan, which they use, is actually even harder and even less malleable to carve than the Italian Carrara marble which Michelangelo had used. We were taken to the factory’s main sales centre where a number of our travellers ordered ornamental elephants, chess pieces with boards, and round tabletops. The factory supplies teak legs and supports for free. I did allow myself to buy a fewer smaller objects including two cake boxes and a small ornamental elephant. Not the cheapest souvenir to buy, but quite unique and certainly attractive. Will Albina be impressed with my purchases?

 

We had a two hour break. I was determined to revisit the grounds of the Taj Mahal with my phone to take some pictures. To help me Shiri and her companion from another coach agreed to come with me as she wanted to buy some souvenirs near the entry gate. We raced their by tuk tuk, weaving our way through the busy streets like dervishes. Every manoeuvre has to be accompanied by honking both by your tuk tuk and by every other vehicle in the road. The clang of loud horns is the wordless language of the street. I guess, one blast means, "Look where you're going", two means "I'm coming through, wish me luck." And three means: "I am coming through and I dare you to stop me!" I have never seen so much fast, bad and reckless driving as I have in India, but for all my time here so far, I have not seen one single accident. We got to the spot where we had to hitch a ride on the local electric people carrier, which brought us to the gate. With Shiri's help I bought myself a ticket and went through with my new found phone. It took me 20 glorious minutes pushing through the crowds in the heavy hot sun to repeat my visual feast of the morning and to take pictures of the Taj from a number of vantage points around the grounds. I could barely get myself away, knowing that this may be the last time in my life that I will see this amazing and beautiful tribute to love and atonement. Then I returned to the exit gate, met Shiri and her friend again, as they emerged from the souvenir shop. This time I had to battle for a place on the returning people carrier with the locals, until I finally got back to the hotel following another hilarious tuk tuk ride.

 In the meantime the rest of the group had been recovering from their morning ordeal and Ajay had announced  the next adventure. He suggested a walk around the local Agra shopping market. I had barely got back with Shiri and I was pretty exhausted by this time. Although this new outing was optional, I decided to go with the group. The coach took us to a spot near the entrance to the Agra Fort, beneath a gilded statue of a warrior on horseback. Somehow in that short journey I had fallen asleep because all I remember was Shiri waking me up and asking if I wanted to stay in the coach or go with them. Everyone else had already left the coach. Of course I hastily dismounted from the coach as well.

Here a fleet of electric rickshaws were waiting for us. Soon we were  hurtling through the poorer streets of the city, past shops and cafes and ended up eventually in a seemingly deserted cul de sac. We all dismounted, and the rickshaws left us. In my febrile imagination I remembered the scene from "Clear and Present Danger", where Harrison Ford's entourage of American diplomats and secret servicemen were lured by a terrorist, disguised as a police motorbike outrider, into a cul de sac like this and shot to pieces (Ford alone escaping). Paralysed by this culture shock experience, we looked around anxiously at our graceless surroundings. A group of grinning local children gathered excitedly around us. However Ajay accompanied by a local guide seemed unabashed.  At their invitation we walked forward towards a reddish coloured building which had apparently once been a historic library but was now a school. There were more children sitting on the steep steps to the school. I moved forward some more, but the guide held me up. "We had better not go in there," he said, "the monkeys are looking somewhat aggressive." I understood he was not referring to the children, but to the grey monkeys prancing on the school roof. These monkeys are everywhere in this city, even in the gardens of the Taj. We backed again into another street and came into the main trading street, reminiscent of an Arab souk. Everything was on sale here, but of a cheaper quality. We had food, clothes, shoes, meat, toys, kitchen utensils, ice cream, fizzy drinks, mechanical tools, and even a shop selling motorbikes, which included some older Royal Enfield models. Everywhere there were bored shopkeepers, busy shoppers, noisy motorbikes, honking tuk tuks, and countless animals, including monkeys (two main breeds, explained Ajay), cows, goats, bullocks, donkeys, squirrels, a camel (pulling a carriage), and hundreds and hundreds of flies. These last were, not so much flying around, as happily settled on various items in the shops or on other animals, with nobody bothering to swat them away. It was not exactly hell in my imagination, but it could have been purgatory.

 

We followed where we were led, like lambs to the slaughter, choking and spluttering as the dust settled obtrusively on our throats. We stopped in particular in front of two adjacent shops selling jars of chutney. These were the two best suppliers of chutney in the city, the local guide assured us. We turned into even narrower lanes, pushing past local shoppers, at one moment leading to another cul de sac selling garish garlands and other bright decorations. It transpired that at the end was a small but venerable Hindu shrine. Here people pushed past us and fell to their knees and seemed to kiss the ground, bringing garlands as tributes, to the shrine goddess who was visible down in the basement of the building. We resumed our journey and walked further on in a somewhat wider street, eventually reaching a mosque. Only three of us had the energy or desire to climb the steep steps to the top, remove our shoes and walk inside. As usual with mosques, the floor was spotless and we seemed to be shielded from the noise and restless hubbub below. The courtyard was open but the walls seemed to be of an older era. We rejoined our colleagues waiting below, and resumed our journey until we reached a wider junction where the rickshaws were waiting for us. Richard looked around, shook his head in bewilderment and just said, "I am speechless". Everyone else had looked equally shocked, but obviously were mostly enjoying the experience. We all got mosquito or flea bites as a memento. The rickshaws drove us back to the hotel. Ajay then told us that next day we would need to begin our journey once again at 6 am. 

I realized that in all this hustle and bustle in the market, I had no chance to reflect on the fact that temple and mosque seem to live alongside each other in harmony. In his general descriptions of India Ajay never once touched upon the issue of religion and had only praise for the Modi government's investment programme. He did once mention the religious strife. That was yesterday in Mumbai, the city that changed its name to that of a Hindu goddess and dropped the former Portuguese name Bombay. I had had no time or energy to discuss with either Ajay or Shiri. Certainly the current government had done little to reassure the enormous Muslim minority in India, about the series of historic mosques being pulled down to make way for even older historic temples, that had been pulled down by the Moghuls five hundred years ago. There is still great tension in India about a new temple being rebuilt in Ayodhya on the ruins of a sixteenth century mosque. Prior to that the place had been seen as the birthplace of the Hindu god Lord Ram. To pious Hindus the destruction of a temple and the building of the mosque in its place at the time was considered an outrage. Naturally they fail to see the reversal of that as an outrage for today's Muslims as well. The Supreme Court in India considered the recent destruction of that mosque regrettable but stated that legally it could not now be reinstated. These matters rankle with both communities, particularly because the ruling BJP party is seen as a Hindu party and not a secular party like its predecessors in the Congress Party. I suppose economic development is a more important issue to most people in India, rather than religion. Yet in the fight to retain power religious issues can be exploited cynically by political parties, often with fatal results.

I went to bed very early, by 9pm in fact, to make sure I can wake up in time for rollcall.

 

Third Day Thursday 16th March 2023

 

It was Thursday and the third day of the India tour. We were all dressed and ready to travel on time, including our courageous colleague with his pair of walking sticks. I was probably less bleary eyed than most as I had had a good night's sleep. It was a four hour journey, with breaks, back to Delhi. We silently watched the flat Indian countryside of Uttar Pradesh pass us by. It was obviously a rich and fertile soil with a high rotation of crops, such as wheat, millet and sugar cane, perhaps as many as five different harvests in the year, as long as the monsoon rains came on time. Often, as we approached nearer Delhi, we saw high chimneys linked to brick factories. Approaching nearer the capital, but still some twenty five miles out, we found isolated large apartment blocks from fifteen to twenty stories high, dotted here and there, but with each mile more and more frequently. They looked so out of place in the flat rural landscape, almost like giant icebergs stranded in the ocean. The guide explained that many Indians invest their savings either in land or gold, and some still found it paid to buy apartments here and commute to work every day, even though they would have to battle increasingly every morning through dense traffic. We travelled on an expressway bordered for many miles with fruit trees and bushes of bright flowers, purple, yellow and orange. But even on the outskirts of the city, out on the side roads, we could still see the occasional cow walking along unhindered by the surrounding traffic.

 

We rejoined the other three coaches at the plush airport hotel where we had our lunch booked and were eventually transferred to the crowded modern domestic section of Delhi International Airport. Of course, we still had to show our passports in Delhi even though it was only a domestic flight.       

We said our goodbyes to Ajay, who had been magnificent as guide and organizer, enjoyed a last hunt amongst the souvenir shops, and boarded an AirAsia flight to Kochi. The flight took three and a half hours. We arrived at night. After the relative heat of northern India, the humid heat of Kerala province seemed initially oppressive. Four coaches waited for us at the airport and drove us for an hour through the city with its many bright streets alternating with darker more industrial zones. When we reached the port area the driver got lost and took several wrong turnings before finally reaching the main port gate.  Finally, we reached our ship. After our three day adventure in the Indian dust and heat Borealis look exceedingly like home to us. Just the view of the ship caused the sleepy passengers to clap and cheer. We still had one last bureaucratic sting of the tail before we left Indian soil. We all queued for an individual check of our passport, putting our luggage through the obligatory scanner, and then a second more detailed check at a window one at a time. Here they took away our e-landing card with which we had been issued on arrival at Mumbai, and also....... our passports. That made me feel uncomfortable. We left our luggage with the ship's staff on the quayside terminal and they hung back, waiting for the sudden tropical downpour to stop. I did not wait. It was 10 o'clock in the evening that I was able to cross the dark wet quayside alone, avoiding the deep puddles left by a tropical storm, and enter by the gangway back onto the ship. I quickly ran up the eight flights of staircases and returned to our cabin where Albina was waiting for me.