Fortunate Kochi

Fort Kochi - Monday 2 & Tuesday 3 November


An on-time Jet Konnect flight took us south in around 1½ hours to Kochi (formerly Cochin), where a pre-arranged taxi from the Fort House Hotel awaited us. It took almost as long to travel by road from the airport to Fort Kochi as it did to fly down from Mumbai. The road, through Ernakulum and across bridges connecting the outlying islands was busy and the giant advertising hoardings in an unfamiliar script made it clear that we were now in the south of the country. Our driver, like most of the people hereabouts, spoke only the local Malayalam language and English, leading Lajpal to comment that he’s a foreigner here too - Lajpal ‘only’ speaks Marwari (and its dialects), Hindi (the national language - which, on principle in this Communist-governed state of Kerala, doesn’t seem to be spoken by anyone) and English!

We were warmly welcomed at the Fort House Hotel, a small but characterful establishment with a lush and colourful garden beside the water and within easy reach of the town’s tourist attractions. Our room in the New Block was simple but scrupulously clean, with a shower that sometimes dispensed hot water and beds that were typical of Indian hotels - as hard as a rock. It was hot outside (32C) but cool in the room’s air-conditioning so, although we did wander into the town just 10 minutes away and had lunch at one of its many restaurants, we quickly retreated to our room for a nap. In the evening, we enjoyed dinner on the Fort House’s terrace, which juts out into the sea and is very atmospheric at night as fishermen in small canoes lay their nets, giant tankers with booming horns pass on their way to moorings, and fishing boats with high prows chug along in the opposite direction, some with navigation lights and some without, on their way to trawl for their night’s catch.

The next morning, after a lazy start and breakfast on the terrace, we took an auto-rickshaw on a two-hour sightseeing tour of Fort Kochi. It cost us all of 150 Rupees (GBP2). The Chinese fishing nets, although still working, are more of a tourist attraction than a means of earning a living but fish caught by boats overnight is sold at the adjoining market and, if you so wish, cooked for you to eat there and then. There are half a dozen of these weighted contraptions, which take several men a lot of effort to raise and lower - just two of them are shown in the panorama at the top of the page and in the other picture below.

The church where Vasco da Gama was once buried (his body was exhumed and taken back to Portugal 14 years later) was the only Christian church I can recall insisting upon removal of shoes before going in and a ban on photography. In sharp contrast, the ornate Santa Cruz Basilica, with its well-preserved religious oil paintings mounted in its high roof, welcomed us with open arms and positive encouragement to take pictures. The Dutch Palace at Matancherry was rather dull, and, as the day wore on, we decided against continuing to Jewtown as its antique shops and the last remaining synagogue in these parts would have been closed until the evening. We went instead to Dal Roti, a small restaurant that I’d read about on TripAdvisor, and had a late lunch of thali - a variety of curries and chutneys with rice and chapattis - just one of the North Indian treats on the menu, served by its hyperactive owner Ramesh.

Walking off the lunch, we took a wrong turn and were soon lost (again!), so hailed a passing auto-rickshaw and ended up at Tea Pot. As its name suggests, this is a teashop - liberally decorated with teapots of all sizes, shapes and colours and with tables made from tea chests. A cuppa and a wedge of hot Death by Chocolate cake were greedily consumed!

It was now late, around 3.00p.m., and I had booked, by e-mail from the UK, for us to attend a demonstration of Keralan martial art (called Kalaripayattu) at 4.00p.m., followed by Kathakali, the traditional dance form. The auto-rickshaw driver waited for us at Tea Pot and then took us to the Kerala Kathakali Centre, the oldest theatre of its kind, where we were to see the performances. To a small audience - us plus two others! - four young men of various sizes spent an hour demonstrating the martial art for which they had trained since boyhood, using sticks, swords, knives, shields, and some judo-like defensive holds. This was immediately followed by the Kathakali actors applying their traditional make-up, partly by themselves and partly by a man who was obviously skilled in adding the bits they couldn’t complete unaided. It’s difficult to describe, so you’ll need to be guided by the photographs. The colours denote good and evil characters and, because the actors don’t speak, they use exaggerated eye, face and hand movements to tell their stories. It takes six years to become sufficiently skilled to perform, either as an actor or as one of the accompanying drummers and singers. The full performance of a story usually takes six hours. Fortunately, for demonstration purposes, the make-up took an hour and the show only lasted another 1½ hours, both more than ample for us. The whole evening’s entertainment cost the princely sum of 700 Rupees (less than GBP10) for two.

Dinner, at the Old Port Restaurant, was a lot more expensive - mainly because we opted for the grilled king prawns in garlic and ginger as part of our meal. Lajpal, being from the desert state of Rajasthan, had never eaten prawns before. I think we may well have some more when we reach Varkala in a fortnight’s time!

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