India-Al: Feb 17, from Peterborough, ON CANADA. Home again.

Fort Kochi, Kerala State, was a great place to decompress from 3 weeks in north India. Most of the first two days, as Graham recovered, was spent on a walking tour of Fort Kochi (including where Vasco da Gama was buried for 14 years) and getting a sense of the colonial period here; even did some reading (I've finally read Margaret Laurence's, The Diviners.) During the rest of the time, we did get to the Ernakulum Utsavam Festival (8 days celebrating Vishnu with an elephant procession), a backwater cruise (where we saw a cinnamon and black-pepper trees and several other spices growing) and Cherai beach where Alan got sunburned (Reminder to Alan: you have different sun exposures at 15 degrees north of the equator than at 40+ degrees!). Also saw Mattancherry Palace (a 1555 gift from the Portuguese) and Paradesi Synagogue (1568), no photos allowed in either. 20 hours of flying to get home, but broken by one night in London followed by 12 hours of sleep last night. Feeling almost human today, the 17th.

Final impressions from India ? A much stronger sense of how close we still are to our primal origins --even after some 12000 years of "civilization". Life is, after all, living and dying, punctuated occasionally by birthdays, marriages, celebrations of other types, illness, some hunger for many, joy and sorrow in various measure. Unless you believe in reincarnation, we have only one shot at this and we must make the most of it.

Love to all who read this. Thanks for sharing our wonderful experience.

Alan and Linda