i survived a 45 hour train ride!

hi everyone !
to those of you who only follow the english posts - the usual apology, im not gonna summarize all the hebrew ones, just continue from the last one... so after buying a lot of tea we left Munnar, and took a local bus to Kochi (formerly known as Cochin). it was a relatively painless 5 hour drive, in the end of which we got to Ernakulam which ios the big (huge) city next to kochi. we took a LONG rikshaw drive to fort kochi where we found a very nics home-stay guest house (home-stay meaning wew had a kitchen to use!) thanks to a couple of French women we just stopped on thew street and they were sweet enough to just hop on the rikshaw and take us there...
we spent a lot of time cooking for shabbat, but we also went on a backwaters trip - thats where you ride a boat in the streams of Kerala (thats the state where kochi is and where they use backwaters), very peaceful and you see all the people that work there - building and moving their materials in boats or making ropes from coconut fiber. it was truly beautiful.
later that day Hadar and IU took the ferry to Ernakulam (much shorter and also 2.5 rupees instead of 170...) which had separate lines for men and women and also separate sitting... we had to go get our train tickets, and took our time to wonder around the city. we found a supermarket, and alos a crazy huge indian clothing shop where i found that every sleeveless to had the material for adding sleeves attatched to it! geniou indians. :-)
on Friday we mainly cooked, and thats when the two Chabadnikim from Vata kanakl joined us. they took a room in a house next door and we shared the food. we also walked together to the synagogue, which took a long time and was pretty nerve wrecking cause everyone gave us confusing instruction, but we made it eventually, and 1 of the remaining 14 jews of kochi told us a bit about the place and showed us their toras. we also passed by a house of one of the old ladies who was very happy to have us and tell us about herself, although it was pretty sad for she is so lonely.
friday night dinner was pretty biug, cause we were joined by Nadav and Reut a couple we met in vata, and after it a group of 4 or 5 tother Israelis popped by, which made the lady of thee hose quite mad and got us in trouble... it was the Chabadnikim's guest house and when we went there the next day to eatr she litteraly kicked us out... very unpleasent. never mind.
Yael left us that night and on sundayu Hadar and i left for Rajastan. it was almost impossible to find shops that were open on a sunday in fort kochi (i foprgot to mention Kerala is a very christian area. and also has a stron comunist party... no connection...) but on the other side (after surviving 2 rikshaws and the ferry with all the bags...) there were a lot. i stocked for the big hunger, o thats after making a whole lot of chapaties in the morning for Hadar who doesnt eat out...
we found our train and coach rather easily and settled, for me it was an upgradfe cause we took and air conditioned car unlike my way from mumbai to goa, but Hadar got the shock of her life on the first few minutes... i only didnt remember there were cockroaches... eaw. there was one other cute Israeli couple in our car, and menachem and sneior, the chabadnikim were on the next one, so we had some company other than the 2 indians in our cabin that did not speak any english... there was also a nice family in the next cabin that did speak english. so the train ride went by pretty quickly, we read, slept, talked, played cards, and hadar and the guys even cooked on the electrical stove cause their coach had electricity, o, and on the 2nd evening we watched a movie on shneior's laptop, about catching adoplph eichman. how random is that... one part was pretty stressful when the 2 guys went of the train to LITBOL (dip in a natural water source which in chabad is appearently custum to do every day) and didnt show up when the train moved 2 minutes later. hadar got really scared and her and evyatar - the guy on our coach went to get their stuff. we held their phones for a while and thought of possibnle solutions but they didnt call. so we called chabad in pune (i had the no.) and asked for the no. of chabad in Pushkar - where they were headed - to tell them and have them take the stuff. and as we finished explaining , they showed up back on the train... apparently they ran and jumped on anoother part of the train and couldnt move in it all the way back so on the next stop they went off and back on the right coach...
other than that the ride was quite peaceful, and eventually we got to Jaipur in Rajastan. i forgot to mention the horribly hot and humid weather in Kochi, and in Rajastan it is nice and dry, a bit chilly at night but not as bad as kodaikanal (or as Jerusalem, as i hear now...).

so now we are in Jaipur, the pink city, which is not really that pink, more like brick red... today we took a walk around it andf it is very lively and fun. although tiring, cause it makes you shop a lot...
o!~ and last night we went to see a bolywood movie!! it was in a crazy fancy cinema, we watched Halla Bol, which is a drama with not enough singing and dancing... it was so funny watching a movie an a language you dont understand and the plot is so bizarre that you cant even figure it out... but there was a really nice indian-canadian guy named ricky who helped us a little with that...
i think thats it for now, in 2 days we're going to Pushkar where i m hoping to upload more photos, hope i dont remember a zillion things i forgot as soon as im done here...
keep well and keep in touch
Eliraz