Slices of Kerala Life

For me and my friend, going to the Subhash Chandra Bose Park in Kochi in the evenings and spending time there, chatting about, sharing thoughts, woes and joys and at the same time enjoying the cool backwater breeze is almost a regular thing. But there had been a break of about a month or so, because of both of us being busy and all and hence yesterday, being Sunday, we both found time to make a round of our usual haunt, though on weekends it’s thronged by families and kids.

This Sunday was special indeed. For as we reached the part and stationed ourself at a vacant place, we saw opposite us, by the berth in the Wellington Island a huge ship, presumably a luxury liner. Steam was being let out and I guessed, being one who has travelled a lot in ships ever since my childhood and have noted different kinds of ships, that it was getting ready to sail.

Very soon the tugboats swung into action and after a while, the ship hooted sirens and then it started slowly turning around and in about half an hour, we saw it set sail from the port of Kochi.

That was ‘Queen Mary 2′, the luxury cruise liner that had reached Kochi yesterday morning, bringing about 2,700 tourists to the shores of Kerala. (This was the third time that ‘Queen Mary 2′  touched Kochi). The tourists had toured the city of Kochi and had visited locations like Alappuzha, Vaikom and Vallarpadam, after which the giant ship set sail to Phuket, with the 2700 tourists and a crew of about 1000.

This Sunday also bore witness to another cruise vessel, ‘Le Ponant’, a French registered one, visiting Kochi. This was the second time that ‘Le Ponant’ was visiting Kochi, with about 40 tourists aboard. They are all busy visiting places in Kochi and it’s learnt that the ship, with a crew of 40 will set sail today from Kochi.

Very positive signals indeed to the tourism sector in Kerala. Maybe my friend and I can hope to see more of such luxury liners during our regular evening visits to the Subhash Park.