Mangalore
Trip Start
Feb 23, 2005
1
12
22
Trip End
Mar 18, 2005
Mangalore, India
Monday, March 7, 2005
We were told that they mine a lot of iron here. I am not surprised.
Part of the day's activities include a tour of a cashew factory, the drive was lovely, mountainous, very different from what we have seen.The factory was interesting, and the labor intensive. Every cashew is handled by Indian women. We saw the fruit that the cashew comes from, it looks kind of like a soft apple with a thumb-like appendage hanging from the bottom, and that appendage is where the nut comes from. It has to be picked, dried, hulled and then each nut has a thin membrane of skin scraped off by native women. I will never complain about the price of cashews again. Of course, I doubt very much that the workers were paid much at all.
On the way back to Mangalore, Mukul pointed out different trees, jack fruit, cashews, fish tail palms. He is very knowledgeable.
Dinner on board tonight was Fillipino night, the waiters were dressed in that style, many are Fillipino and the food was also Fillipino. I had only vegetables for dinner, then I decided to have a Fillipino dessert. What a dessert! It was served in what looked like a sundae goblet, had something in the bottom of it, silly me, I thought it might be chocolate. Not so!! The dessert chef put some crushed ice over this stuff in the bottom, then a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Sounds good doesn't it? Not so. The stuff in the bottom turned out to be corn kernels, white beans and cubes of cooked potatoes. I didn't ask for the recipe.
Mary Ann had a terrible bite on her ankle, it swelled up a lot, she had to get some medicine for it. In the meantime, she told Mukul that she had "elephantitis". He began to laugh, and said "Oh, we would make a fortune, you hold out you foot and then" he gestured as if he were playing a stringed instrument. It was just hilarious. The native Indians will do anything to make a buck, begging is the least of it.
