Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post
So an overnight bus ride down south which crawled through Bangalore’s evening rush hour was rewarded with our arrival at the blissful Keralan beach of Varkala. We managed to stay in this cheap and comfortable guest house called Bohemian Masala. Located in the village (with a giant elephant sat in the bar!) it is a two minute walk from the beach instead of up on the cliffs with the countless restaurants, tat shops and tourist shacks. We climbed up the cliffs for breakfast though and as we scoffed ourselves stupid on some tasty curry dishes we were rewarded with limitless views of the Indian Ocean plus a school of dolphins chasing a load of fish. With all that hard work of climbing and eating we took a deserved rest on the long sandy beach. Later on during a gorgeous sunset we sat at a table lit by candles and shared a beer or two poured from teapots (restaurant owners do this on the sly to avoid paying tax on the beer and make the beer cheaper for us) and watched as families flaunted their saris and took their little kids for a dip.
…with a couple of easy days like
that it was time to move on. Getting a real cheap train along the coast up to Kochi we passed through the famous backwaters - big areas of canalised water full of quiet, pretty villages and slow boats carrying people, spices and fish to here and there. On arrival we took the cheap option of staying at the Maple Guest House in the adjacent town of Ernakulam, the younger less graceful brother of historic Kochi. The following day, for the cost of peanuts we caught a ferry across the harbour to Fort Cochin (Kochi). The town is an old Portuguese trading port and is an enjoyable mix of old buildings, winding streets, spices, potatoes, Chinese fishing nets and world religions (Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Jain & Muslim). We were happy just to stroll along and take it all in. Our first stop was the historic and lovely St Francis church. This was the first church built by Europeans in India. Originally Portuguese Catholic (Vasco da Gama - a great explorer and first European to sail direct to India - was first buried there before he was taken back to Lisbon), the church changed to Protestant Dutch hands then British. The local
story goes that Kochi and south India had Christianity way before most of Europe as Jesus' disciple Thomas came here not long after the resurrection and starting converting the locals. So the place is full of Christians, including this really nice owner of the Garden Cafe who explained in detail all his UK friends and his family history and their connections with the British Empire. This is all going into a fictional book which we all hope will win the Booker Prize when it's finally published.
Strolling some more through the town we stopped off for some tea at this old guy's shop and then headed to the Pardesi Synagogue in Jew Town. As you'd guess with such an important trading port there's a sizable old Jewish community. To round off the day we took in a local Kathakali theatre performance. A local Keralan thing, there are a handful of musicians on stage playing drums, symbols ect. and one singer/narrator while an actor or two wearing heavy make-up and pregnant like dresses play out a scene from one of the great Hindu epics such as Mahabharata. It was only an hour performance but the whole thing traditionally takes a
couple of days to perform in full. The actors train for between 8 and 10 years before they start performing partly because their hand and face gestures are so complicated. Each little movement describes emotion or words so just 'saying' one sentence takes forever! The bright green character was my favourite, his eyes seem to pop out their sockets and he was a bit of a naughty one.
After that it was time for a deserved cup of masala chi from our friend at the 'Ken Livingstone' tea stall next to the Main Boat Jetty, Ernakulam. Perhaps it was a tourist gimmick but the stall was covered in a huge photo of our London Mayor Ken because the guy seemed to love him. Class!! - the tea was good too (shame we lost the classic photos 'cos our photo CD got damaged - ahhh!!).
The next day was a national strike against hicked petrol prices so our plans of visiting the Backwaters on a boat were cancelled. Apparently the bus to pick us up and drop us at the boat would have got stoned by the picket lines. Hmmmm. Instead we got up late, walked through a ghost
time for tea, Kochi
The tea guy is keeping Liz cool with flapping carboard town of closed shops and no traffic, and ended up at the second floor of a posh hotel. Behind closed curtains in a conference room (the restaurant pretended to be shut because of the strike) for many hours we tucked into an amazing Indian buffet lunch including 'only' two puddings for Tom. All well and good. Next stop - overnight train to Goa in order to pick up Caz and Mark from the airport and have a fantastic Christmas on the beach. Yay!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.158s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 17; qc: 68; dbt: 0.1127s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb