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India!

After sleeping overnight in the Bangkok airport on Tuesday, I left Thailand one day after my visa expired (thankfully this is ok) and started my long set of flights across India to get to Kochi.  It was a cool experience but I was stoked to get off the final plane and know I don’t have to see one of those for a few weeks.

I crashed as soon as I got to my hostel, woke up late and wandered around the area here by Fort Kochin.  I don’t have internet access where I’m staying so I didn’t realize that the test driving and rickshaw familiarization for the Rickshaw Run started today – but ends at four so I’ll just skip it until tomorrow.

Random thoughts about India, Kochi specifically after a few hours:

  • The hype is true – the way people drive in the urban areas is crazy.  Possibly as crazy as I’ve seen to some degree, because as I was warned, there are huge trucks and buses in the middle of everything and they just crush people with no warning.  Brutal.
  • Also as I heard, everything is definitely male-centric here, at least outside.  I can almost count the number of women I’ve seen outside and they have almost always been in pairs, one younger, one older.  Tons of men wandering around though.
  • Dirty, very dirty.  Worse than a lot of South America and definitely worse than Phuket.  Then again I’m also catching the tail end of the dry season, so…
  • The people so far seem really cool.  More smiles from strangers than I saw in Cambodia and Thailand, more groups hanging out and having fun, lots of courtesy.  So far the people are definitely the highlight and outweigh the other negatives.

Okay, think that’s it for now.  My arm is still really hurting, but hopefully it will survive this!

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