Kochi

The train from Coimbatore to Kochi (previously known as Cochin) was pleasant if a little on the toasty side. There was a definitely noticeable increase in temperature as we worked our way south and west towards the Arabian coast.

The landscape on the eastern border of Kerala was as dry and dusty as it had been in southern Karnataka, apart from the occasional dribble of a river. I found it hard to imagine where all the water that made up the famous backwaters of Kerala would be coming from.


Speeding along on the train.


Soon enough we reached Ernakulum Junction train station in Kochi. Clairy snapped this shot of the usual organised chaos from the footbridge linking the platforms.


The city of Kochi is made up of a number of islands and peninsulas. The mainland Ernakulam is the suitably frenetic transport hub and main commercial area. Out in the bay sit the Bolgatty, Vallarpadam and Vypeen islands, the last of which apparently contained one of the nicer beaches in the area named Cherai Beach (after our Goa experiences we decided to give this one a miss). The main draw in Kochi though is the old port town of Fort Cochin.

We squeezed onto the local ferry that would take us the short journey across the water. As promised the narrow streets of Fort Cochin definitely felt quieter than the heaving smog filled streets of Ernakulam. We managed to locate the home stay type accommodation we had pre-booked after our rickshaw driver questioned numerous locals as to where it might be. Our hosts were the comedy named Harry-John (why stick with one name when you can have two!) and his very busy wife Mercy. Harry-John did all the talking, but seemed to spend pretty much all of his days fast asleep on the sofa, while the long-suffering Mercy, cleaned, cooked, washed the car (and our clothes), and performed a multitude of other tasks.

Fort Cochin has been a busy trading post for over 600 years. The Chinese, Portuguese, British and Dutch have all played major parts in its history, resulting in some lovely old architecture, and interesting fishing techniques. We found it to be a little underwhelming though in terms of actual things to see, and particularly disappointing on the food front despite the lonely planet gushing about the culinary delights available. We didn't intend to stay as long as we did, but Clairy got a very unpleasant sinus infection and as a result we had to hang about for a few extra days.

On one of our first nights out I was rather excited to discover the local underhand methods for getting around the prohibitively expensive licensing costs. Simply serve all your illegal alcoholic drinks in a teapot! Unfortunately, the beer was overpriced, and god knows quite what they were serving me, as it tasted pretty rancid and gave me a horrific hangover the next day.


An attractive bit of graffiti, possibly in Malayam, the main language spoken in Kerala.


Out in the sweltering midday sun again, we found the beautiful Chinese canter lever fishing nets. They are mainly used at high tide, and require four people to lower and raise them. As you can see here, the beach and water were absolutely choked with rubbish, and this combined with seeing the local catches spending most of their time in the sun covered in flies sadly pretty much put us off trying any of the Keralan sea food specials.


They were mostly made from large lengths of bamboo lashed together, and when we later saw them in operation it really was quite an ingenious design.




Their graceful lines made quite an attractive sight by the sea.


A nice shot from Clairy of the old boilers that used to power the cranes used in the port.


'Clairy...can I have an ice-lolly?...Puu-lease...Its really hot and my throat is parched'. 'Oh go on then'


I love this shot that Clairy took of the fishing net in mid swing. It didn't look like they were catching much apart from oil stained plastic bags mind.


On one of our wanders round town we spotted this slightly bedraggled but tame bird of prey that somebody had left some food out for.


The Teapot, one of our favoured cafes that was done out nicely, with peeling paint and old tea chests for tables.


The Dutch Cemetery, containing worn out graves of Dutch soldiers and traders.


Eventually we did find somewhere that did some top notch Keralan style Indian food. I loved my parathas stuffed with all sorts of curried veg. We would have come back here more if the proprietor's Basil Fawlty style employee relations hadn't got a bit too much for us.


Feeling slightly short of things to check out nearby, we hired another scooter (yay!). We cruised round to the outrageously named Jew Town, the port area that was formerly the centre of the spice trade. Clairy took this lovely picture of the Synagogue built in 1568. It apparently had a beautifully ornate interior, but was sadly closed for the day.


This was about as close as we came to the remnants of the spice trade that still exists here. There were various touristy spice markets around, but the vast majority of premises were rather dubious looking 'antique' shops, with pushy to the point of rude owners who shouted at us if we went anywhere near them, even when zipping past on the scooter!


There were some lovely old building about though.


The next morning we continued our tour of the area by scooter. This church was a particular beauty.


Cruising round the old warehouse area of River Road, Clairy snapped some beautiful old crumbling buildings.


A lovely mash-up of old advertising and sticker art.


There was a lot going on in the tiny streets. I had to have my wits about me on the scooter as there was always someone or something not looking where it was going (strangely here it quite often seemed to be French couples with pushchairs).


The river looked horribly polluted, with a permanently burning rubbish dump just to the left of this shot, but Clairy somehow managed to make it look positively gorgeous.




We spotted quite a few of these rather disturbing protest messages up around the place.


Goaty-pegs! Clairy noticed this whole family had taken advantage of the gravel piled up in front of the disused windows.


'Ohh-yes, we've all got a spot of our own'




They really are such comedy little characters.


Another OTT church from our scooter travels. We thought this one's blue circles looked rather disconcertingly like eyes.


This enormous tanker zoomed passed at an incredible speed.


At this point we did get to watch the canter lever nets in motion. Clairy took this vid.


Slightly worse for wear looking fishies. Clairy said the smell almost overpowered her.


There was certainly a lot of it though, and some enormous specimens.


Clairy liked the look of this torn political poster by the fish market.


Toot-toot. 'Come on Clairy. Stop taking pictures of the scutty rubbish dumps!'. The trees along here were really quite amazing beasts, despite their manky surroundings.


A particularly attractive pose from me in Harry-John and Mercy's driveway. We did enjoy staying in their cool and attractive home.


Check out the mighty jack fruits that were outside our window. We just can't get over the size of these beauties.


We probably would have enjoyed Fort Cochin a little more if we had just spent a couple of nights there, but I mustn't be too harsh as it wasn't the worse place we have been to by any means. In the end we used the time to plan our continuing route around India, and booked ourselves a flight back up to Mumbai. This gave us five days more in Kerala, so we worked out an itinerary for those last few days and headed back to the station at Ernakulam, where I was looking forward to our next destination of Qillom where we would hopefully get to see some real back water village life.

Miniature Train to Coimbatore

I totally loved our few chilly nights in Ooty. It was incredibly refreshing to have a bit of time without my constant sweaty sheen. Both of us found the minibus journey from Mysore particularly horrific, and were glad to have the option of descending the 2400m+ of the Western Ghats by rail in a hopefully slightly more controlled manner.

The miniature train as it is known, is one of the Indian mountain railways given world heritage status by Unesco in 2005. I was well excited by the prospect of heading down the mountains behind a steam locomotive, but it turned out that these days the first hour is done via a diesel train, before the engine is switched for a steam one. This would have had me a bit worried if we hadn't read about it in the local paper whilst we were staying in Ooty. The article described how a group of trainspotters from Britain had been brought over to offer suggestions for improvements to the service. Accompanying the article was a photo positively stuffed with odd looking blokes with big white beards. I wondered if that could possibly be me in later life?

The miniature train turned out to be quite an accurate description as the carriages were indeed tiny. We had only been able to reserve ourselves a seat in the second class carriage, but I wasn't too worried about this as long as we could actually get into our seats. As usual it was complete mayhem trying to get inside the carriage as soon as it arrived, with young men elbowing old women and children out the way despite everyone having a reserved seat. Once inside with our massive bags we realised one of the problems with it being quite such a tiny train. There was no space for baggage at all, and most of the Indian families accompanying us seemed to have brought at least two king size suitcases each.

While Clairy was being pushed around by elderly women I endeavoured to get my rucksack under our seat, and hers under the one behind us. With some dangerously forceful squeezing I did eventually achieve this, and we finally sat down to watch the chaos around us as various large bags were rammed through the open windows and into people's faces.

Even as the train finally got going, it seemed there was still a game of musical chairs in progress. The chap on the right with the woolly hat on had managed to fill his two whole reserved seats with his family's baggage, resulting in them having to move seats each time someone got on the train to claim their own seat. This circus very much reminded us of the Friday bank holiday train from London to Devon, although it possibly lacked some of the miserable yet cut-throat selfishness of good old England.


The views were great as we rumbled out of Ooty. The visibility was also pretty good at this altitude.


Gorgeous blue sky looking towards the front of the train.


The landscape was quite sparse at the initial higher altitudes.




Then we snaked our way through some shady forests.


The diesel engine out front.


A regular sight no matter how exciting the mode of transport. A sleeping beardo.


We stopped to swap to the steam engine, and Clairy spotted this optimistic notice. 'Clean habits are noticed by others and copied too' (Honest!).


The steam engine regularly filled the open carriage with smoke and ash, but that just added to the experience.


Choo-chooooo!


The descent rapidly became steeper. I kept trying to photograph the regular signposts advertising the gradients of the next and previous sections of track for the drivers, but I was a bit too slow. The steepest I saw was 1 in 9.6!

Heading down we travelled through some really pretty tea plantations.


We loved the dense bushes with tiny picker's paths in between.


We weren't sure exactly what the purpose of the tall trees between the bushes were. Possibly just to hold the soil together better on the steep slopes.




The train filled right up as we stopped at the small stations on the line. Each carriage had a few people riding on the open balcony at the back. I thought this would have been a good spot for the views, if possibly slightly treacherous.


As we reached the main valley through which we would descend on to the plain below, it became apparent we were definitely on the best side for views, despite my asking for the wrong side when we booked the seats. As the valley sides dropped away to some colossal vertical drops below, Clairy was happy for me to be have the window seat and take the photies.


Looking down the steep-sided valley.




A road of lethal bends followed the track down below, and we were again thankful that we were on the train and not in a minibus driven by a crazy man convinced that every item of traffic in front of him was an insult to his masculinity and therefore had to be overtaken immediately.


You can just about make out the plains down below through the haze.


There were a lot of narrow bridges with huge boulder strewn ravines underneath...


...and also a lot of tunnels. There is an obvious problem with steam trains and tunnels, that I hadn't really encountered before. The long ones resulted in the carriage being absolutely thick with choking black smoke. I was sure we would arrive all looking like Victorian chimney-sweeps.




After an hour and a half of steep descent, we stopped at a station so the engine could refill it's water tanks. There was also a little shop selling bags of samosas and various other hygienically questionable but nonetheless tasty looking snacks. A huge group of macaques appeared and ruthlessly stalked the passengers. I watched a chap of some religious order feed a samosa to a macaque with one hand and then have his entire bag of food ripped from his other hand by another who felt the need for a rather more direct type of generosity.

Clairy squeezed off the carriage and got some nice pics.


What a lovely old beast. The engineer was re-greasing some important part.


'Fill it up'.


The macaque that was to be in this shot did a runner, but we still liked the end result.


Oh hi!


As we reached the plains the sun was setting resulting in a beautiful peachy sky.


And finally we headed into the town of Mettupalayam where we would leave the miniature train and switch to a normal one for the last hour to our destination of Coimbatore. The track passed some pretty basic housing and cheerful waving kids...


...some of whom were picking around in the rubbish dump alongside.


I like the smoke from the train and the evening light in this one of the houses of Mettupalayam.


After waving a teary goodbye to the miniature train, we had an hour to wait until the express would take us to Coimbatore. The platform was full of strange characters, one of whom was a coffee-waller who had the most insane frog-like delivery, which involved him standing right in front of pretty much anyone, and repeating the neverending two-tone refrain 'COPPEE..coppee..COPPEE..coppee'. In the end it was too much for us and we both agreed to have one.

The train soon turned up and a cheerful train officer opened up a reserved sleeper carriage for all the foreign tourists, despite the fact that none of us had a reserved ticket. Who were we to argue.

Here we are enjoying our coppee...COPPEEE...ccoppppeeeeeeee.....aahhhhhh make it stop.


What a beautiful lady.


After arriving in Coimbatore we located a hotel that would just about suffice for the one night we aimed to stay there before getting our train the next day onto Fort Kochi in Kerala. We headed out to find somewhere to eat, starving as we were from our day of sitting on trains. We eventually found the RHR hotel restaurant that did us a decent curry and Clair's favourite peas pulau rice.

Confident of their standards we returned the next morning for breakfast much to the joy of our waiter from the previous night. I asked what some of the Dosa's were that we didn't recognise on the menu, and said that I wanted a large one, like the big fellas we had seen going to tables around us. He confirmed that we wanted a large dosa, and I asked for the same for Clairy, but he replied that we could only have one and headed off to the kitchen. I was a bit miffed by this and was silently cursing him for not getting us two like we had asked when it suddenly all became clear.

He had ordered us the biggest dosa in the world! Look at the freakin' size of that thing...even I had to agree that maybe two would have been too much.


Breakfast is the most important meal of the day you know.


MMmmm...Just thinking of it now makes me hungry. Clairy did help eat some of it, honest.


Clairy also got this nice pic of the swastik flower display.


And this fab shot of the restaurant through the bizarre ugly-fish's tank. Nice.


And that was it for our brief sojourn in Coimbatore. We picked up our bags from the hotel and walked back to the train station to catch the train on to Kerala.