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Published: April 16th 2008
Elephant on a truck
Enroute to Kochi, we saw this - an elephant being transported on a truck!Today we checked out of our hotel at about 8:00am and our ride to Kochi was already waiting for us to leave around 8:30am to Kochi (formerly Cochin) with one stop in Alappuzha (formerly Alleppey). The journey was long, just under 4 hours. We stopped in Alappuzha for a while, it is also known as the Venice of the East. This is the hub for backwater tours and popular venue for boat races. Stopped only for a little while, nothing much to see here other than the dock where the boats take off from. Lots of boats offering tours here. We found out from the local tourism office here that we had not overpaid for our backwater tour yesterday.
We arrived in Kochi, just after 12:00pm and headed to the hotel. The hotel we are staying in is called Gama Heritage Residency which is a modern hotel with an old look and feel in Fort Kochi which is the touristy part of Kochi. It was pretty good, the price was right (about Rs.2020, $54/night), the staff friendly and the service was excellent. This hotel is for only one day, tomorrow, we move to the Ballard Bungalow, art of the same
group of hotel, a different hotel which is more than 100 years old - the building that is. The reason they put us here is because there was no room in the Ballard for today, we move there tomorrow. Once we were all checked in, we headed out for lunch at a place Prem read about in the Lonely Planet called Talk of the Town which is a simple, small and cheap eatery in the Fort area. Excellent food! Mostly curry dishes again but that's ok, they were different from what we have been having so far. We had some fish fry, prawn fry and a fish curry and ending with what else - deep fried bananas.
After lunch we headed to explore the area more on foot. It was a very hot day though, around 33 Celsius and close to 100% humidity! We visited Santa Cruz Basilica built in 1506 which has some pretty impressive murals on the ceiling which were painted in the early 1900s. We continued walking ending up at the beach in Fort Kochi. It was not all that clean and is not really known for its beach here. There were a whole bunch of
Hotel Gama Residency
This is where we had exceptional service, the captain got some fruit for me and made Prem a ginger-lemon tea for the night in a flask. Chinese fishing nets all along the beach used to catch anything from prawns to fish. The Fort Kochi area has some of the original buildings, most built in the 16 & 17 century by the Portuguese.
For dinner, we just had some fruits. I was craving for mangoes and bananas but the kitchen at the hotel did not have any so the Captain offered to go buy some for us - now, that's service! He got us the mangoes and bananas from somewhere (cost about Rs.20 each), as well, he made some ginger-lemon tea for Prem as she was still coughing hard; he even pounded the ginger himself! They did not have a kettle in the room so he prepared the same ginger-lemon tea for Prem in a flask for overnight. Awesome service!
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