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Published: February 10th 2008
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Fort Kochi, Cochin
Cochin is a landing place for tourists, mainly European, before they head down South to the beaches, some go North to GOA, so they stay at Fort Kochi for a few days either side. Along the beach are old giant Chinese fishing nets but there is no swimming. Back from the beach there is this small area of about 8 interwoven streets with European style guest houses, restaurants and shops originating from the Portuguese and Dutch merchants who arrived here hundreds of years ago. It is really quite quaint and an unusual sight for us in India. Nearby is Jew Town which is a street of over priced tourists shops, a temple and Dutch palace near where the ferry goes over to Cochins city.
Whilst it was a very cool village and had some cafes with more familiar décor, it did have smelly open drains in parts, goats wandered the streets, and terrible food. Carl thought it was a cool village for India, and it was really, but I thought other than the European style buildings, there was nothing much to it. We ended up spending most of our time on the internet planning ahead. It
looks like we will not be riding the train in India again as flights do not cost much more. It is a shame cos there were a couple of scenes I had witnessed at train stations I wanted to capture on the camera. One is the cow standing on the station platform looking like its waiting for a train, and I could just imagine that cow getting on the train and walking up and down the train corridors with no reaction from the India passengers. The other is all the passengers carrying their bags on their heads!
We were planning a few days over at Vypeen Island before heading North to GOA but people put us off going. The trains were fully booked, so we booked a night at the Banana Leaf in the backwaters closer to the airport and a cheap flight to GOA.
It seems for all our taxi rides up the coast its like one big long road with continuous houses and shops. There is never any break between towns and our drive to Banana Leaf was no different. Little smoldering fires on the side of the streets with people burning the rubbish outside their
shops or houses. We passed huge groups of people huddled outside churches singing hymns. The houses ranged from small 1 room concrete building to large houses behind iron gates, all with front yards of mixed red dirt and sand, most exteriors black and dirty, just needing a lick of paint. We have seen very few poor or slum houses down South in our travels, definitely no Rajasthan style houses. The traditional dress for men is worn by plenty and is different from the North being the long sarong folded up and tucked in the front.
We were thankful that we actually arrived, we do prefer the older taxis like our driver car in Rajasthan as they cannot move very fast. But the newer taxi (like little Honda hatchback) normally driven by the younger driver is faster. They tend to think they are on a formula One race track playing dodge the bus, or not! Everyday there are bus accidents reported in the news killing many people including school buses. In Rajasthan people were hanging off the back, sides and roof of the buses, you would see them running along and jumping on a bus, then climbing up the roof.
No idea how the bus driver got their fare.
Food We loved the Teapot Café, it had clean food, but there are quite a few cafes and Café Coffee Day is near completion. The restaurant choices for dinner were few and you had to really hunt them out; hiding upstairs some of them, but the food was below average. We thought it was our choices but others agreed.
Accommodation Review We pre-booked at Sajhome for 3 nights as he had great reviews on Trip Advisor. It was Ok clean, large room, small TV and nice deck that did not look out on anything but a road. He is a great host and price was great at 900 rupees (NZ$30), he makes a mean Kerala breakfast. But he mucked up our booking and only had us in for 2 nights so we had to move down the road to Fort Shore Home Stay which was 100 rupees cheaper and the same as Sajhome with a bigger TV - so good deal. Both were 2 blocks away from the little European township which had all the restaurants and shops, but only took 4 minutes to walk.
Sajhome Fort Shore Homestay Banana Leaf - If you are serious about peace and quiet then this is the place for you, it is situated in the backwaters of Cochin. There are about 5 individual circular bungalow type rooms along the front of a river, and fantastic Indian food is cooked here for you at very cheap prices. The tourist office we used told us 1800 rupees including all meals, and it was, but it was supposed to only be breakfast, but they stuck to what he promised us. An Italian and local resident own the place, they had no money to build so they got up front payment for from friends in Europe booking package for 20 days including accommodation, food, Yoga and the Ayurveda stuff and had 90 days to build it - which they did! It was a great stay but to stay longer you would need to be seeking a peaceful holiday. I cannot find the website at the moment, but they do have one.
Its a short one this time, but I am also publishing GOA today/tomorrow
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