The new cruise making India more accessible – and enjoyable – than ever before

Kochi is India in transition. It has a major shipyard, huge oil refinery, flourishing IT industry and its airport is entirely solar-powered. Yet elements of old India are still just to be seen. The cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, introduced in the 13th century, are gradually disappearing. Suspended from great, bell-shaped frames of bamboo, counterbalanced with strings of rocks, they dip gracefully into the water to the excitement of onlookers and flocks of expectant crows. Twenty nets once lined the shore, now there are five. “Designer” lorries, with cabs garishly decorated in a style similar to British barge art, are being superseded by characterless super-trucks, and the traditional hand laundry, where clothes are still bashed clean with stones, is down to an elderly staff of 15.

So should cruises go to India? Answer: emphatically Yes.

Indian cruises are doubly rewarding, both as a way of confronting prejudices about going to the country at all, and then for revealing its excitements. Boudicca’s cruise epitomised the situation. The ship wasn’t full, yet passenger interest could hardly have been higher. 

And the Indian government wants cruises. At least part of the government does. It is a very Indian situation: in the same way that there is tension in the highest ranks of the Hindu deity between Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer, different ministries are divided in their attitude to cruising.