The announcement came that passengers travelling through to Kochi were to stay on the plane (that's us). The next announcement said to disembark by the front exit . . . and then the back exit . . . and then . . . and then . . . . You can just visualize the 10 of us trying to maneuver back and forth with our bags along that narrow aisle! We were eventually herded onto a shuttle on the tarmac when Sue-On noticed that she had left one of her carry-on bags on the plane! The shuttle bus hadn't moved yet, so she ran up the steps and through the whole the whole gamut to her seat (36F) saying, "I left my blue bag!" 

The cleaners had gone all over the plane already and they were all saying, "Lady blue bag!" A steward said it was in security, and Sue-On panicked, thinking she'd have to go to the terminal and perhaps miss the connecting flight. Luckily they had it stowed by the front exit. As she raced back down the aisle to the rear exit, the cleaners were all waiting with smiles and high-fives LOL!

 Sue-On broke all records getting back to the bus -- she swore that it was the fastest run of her life -- and there we sat . . .  for about 15 minutes. Eventually we were loaded onto our next flight from Mumbai to Kochi.

It was another short flight to Kochi, the start of our next two weeks in the south of India. Again, they served us lunch during the flight: butter chicken, rice, a sweet desert and yogurt. 

When we landed, Bill was sliding an arm down the handrail with his laptop in hand. He got a big scratch on his arm and was bleeding all over. We didn't notice but the porters noticed and came over to take our carry-on backpacks right away. Another came over with a handful of napkins to apply pressure.  Sheesh! Nothing like grabbing all the attention. Luckily, Sue-On had large bandaids and the bleeding stopped. A man from the first-aid post inside the terminal came over also to check the wound to see if he needed more medical care. 

We waited outside at arrivals pickup site for some time. Eventually, just as we were starting to wither from the heat, our 15-seater van came to the rescue. 

It was an hour's drive to our hotel in Kochi, along the harbour area and then through a maze of side streets. The lush tropical vegetation was quite a departure from the hotter and drier north. The driver was trying to point out some interesting sights, but his English was very broken. From what we could see, the driver was taking a lot of side streets! We were worried that he was our CEO! Just when we started to fear that we were being high jacked, we arrived at our hotel and were met by our very genial and knowledgable official guide, Sanjay. We had begun the start of an all-new adventure with another 15 days of exotic sights across the southern portion of the Sub-Continent.