From Trivandrum I went to Cochin, which was a nice 4 hour ride on the luggage space of the second class train. You know, up there above the heads of the people, where you put your bags. (Not on the roof of the train! Actually, I have only seen that on pictures.) In India it's quite normal to climb up to the luggage space after all seats and floor space are full. This is the view from up there:
After I arrived to Cochin I jumped in an autorickshaw which took me to the place of the Swedish-Dutch guy Jesper, whom I met on CouchSurfing and who was nice enough to let me sleep at their place 2 nights if in turn I make some Hungarian Nutella pancakes for him and his flatmates. :) Well, I was happy to make some, so I stayed with them and we spent the Diwali together. Diwali is the Festival of Lights in India, one bursts firecrackers and fireworks to celebrate.
This history of Diwali (Warning: I won't be precise. I'm a software developer, not a historian) So the history of Diwali is that a king used to reign in the old times in India, a very good king whom everybody loved and everyone lived in great prosperity and happyness during his ruling... but one day the king died. And time has passed but people celebrate his birthday (or day of death, whatever) and light up everything, because there's a legend that the spirit of the king comes back every year on that day and wanders around the country... and people want to show their good old king that they still live in big happyness and prosperity, so he goes back to his grave satisfied in the morning. So, that's quite the story.
Click the picture!!!
