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.
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