All square.
What a thoroughly civilised day. Great nights sleep. Lovely breakfast. Leisurely walk around old Cochin. There is a jain temple here and we wanted to see it. We did a whistle stop tour of the major sights when we first arrived here before setting out on our adventuring. Today was temple day, by day I mean morning as Good ole Crispy was adamant she was going in the pool at the hotel. We set of walking but as always I underestimated the distances involved. I love walking and can go for hours. Crispy gets fed up pretty quickly, remember the "ups" and "downs" in Pooley Bridge, so we succumbed to a Tuk tuk.
It was a good choice as it turned out as the Jain temple was miles away and has strict opening hours for "non Jains".
Jainism is a strange off shoot of Hinduism that is more akin to Buddhist ideology.
They don't believe in a god or omnipotent diety. They beieve in Karma. The easiest way to think of this is that the purpose of the game is too get rid of your karma. Karma are invisible particles of negativity. Think of dust. If you do or think bad things then karma (or the dust) sticks to you and you have to think and do good things to shake it off. You can't get a better life if your covered in dust. That's Jainism in a nutshell. We also went to a huge six hundred year old Hindu temple but non Hindus were not allowed in. Met a lovely old guy outside though that told us all about it.
Then back to the hotel for a swim. It was at this point that I remembered that I had not brought any swimming shorts.
My views on swimming pools are well known. I am an avid hater of these self contained pools of bacterial soup. This time though I will make an exception as the sea is out of bounds due to the currents.
We called into a local tailor who knocked me up a pair in under ten minutes. They may not be adidas (other brands of sportswear are available) but they certainly do the job. From now on these are going to be MY favourite holiday shorts.
Sorry about the legs.
Back to the hotel and into the pool. Whilst Crispy was happily splashing about in the water I surfed around Google.
As my friends will know, I am a Freemason. A fact I am very proud of and have no problem sharing with anyone interested enough to ask.
I discovered that there was a Freemasons hall around ten minutes down the road from our hotel. a quick further search discovered the name and number of the secretary. Who it turns out is a retired sea captain. I wrote him a quick email asking if it would be possible whilst we are here to have a look around his masonic hall. Within the hour he got back to me with his telephone number. He sounds a lovely man and tomorrow he is going to pick us up and take us to the hall. It should prove very interesting.
Tonight we are going to see if we can find "pizza". I don't think I could face another curry. God knows what it is going to be like.
I have only ever had one pizza in India before and it wasn,t a good experience. "In for a penny, in for a pound" as they say.
Bare and Crispy, Cochin, Kerala, India.
What a thoroughly civilised day. Great nights sleep. Lovely breakfast. Leisurely walk around old Cochin. There is a jain temple here and we wanted to see it. We did a whistle stop tour of the major sights when we first arrived here before setting out on our adventuring. Today was temple day, by day I mean morning as Good ole Crispy was adamant she was going in the pool at the hotel. We set of walking but as always I underestimated the distances involved. I love walking and can go for hours. Crispy gets fed up pretty quickly, remember the "ups" and "downs" in Pooley Bridge, so we succumbed to a Tuk tuk.
It was a good choice as it turned out as the Jain temple was miles away and has strict opening hours for "non Jains".
Jainism is a strange off shoot of Hinduism that is more akin to Buddhist ideology.
They don't believe in a god or omnipotent diety. They beieve in Karma. The easiest way to think of this is that the purpose of the game is too get rid of your karma. Karma are invisible particles of negativity. Think of dust. If you do or think bad things then karma (or the dust) sticks to you and you have to think and do good things to shake it off. You can't get a better life if your covered in dust. That's Jainism in a nutshell. We also went to a huge six hundred year old Hindu temple but non Hindus were not allowed in. Met a lovely old guy outside though that told us all about it.
Then back to the hotel for a swim. It was at this point that I remembered that I had not brought any swimming shorts.
My views on swimming pools are well known. I am an avid hater of these self contained pools of bacterial soup. This time though I will make an exception as the sea is out of bounds due to the currents.
We called into a local tailor who knocked me up a pair in under ten minutes. They may not be adidas (other brands of sportswear are available) but they certainly do the job. From now on these are going to be MY favourite holiday shorts.
Sorry about the legs.
Back to the hotel and into the pool. Whilst Crispy was happily splashing about in the water I surfed around Google.
As my friends will know, I am a Freemason. A fact I am very proud of and have no problem sharing with anyone interested enough to ask.
I discovered that there was a Freemasons hall around ten minutes down the road from our hotel. a quick further search discovered the name and number of the secretary. Who it turns out is a retired sea captain. I wrote him a quick email asking if it would be possible whilst we are here to have a look around his masonic hall. Within the hour he got back to me with his telephone number. He sounds a lovely man and tomorrow he is going to pick us up and take us to the hall. It should prove very interesting.
Tonight we are going to see if we can find "pizza". I don't think I could face another curry. God knows what it is going to be like.
I have only ever had one pizza in India before and it wasn,t a good experience. "In for a penny, in for a pound" as they say.
Bare and Crispy, Cochin, Kerala, India.
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