European Flavor of India

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In what appears to be a good decision in retrospect, we opted to stay in the Ernakulum area, just outside uber touristy Fort Cochin, at John’s Lodge. The owner, oddly enough named John, was like many Kerelans that we met; he relished the opportunity to meet a stranger and engage them in a conversation. We collectively decided that John is perhaps a bit starved for a decent conversation these days as he took us through his personal history that has unfolded over the past 8 years. It is fair to say that we know more than our fair share about John’s property disputes with his neighbors, his grievances with the Cochin government, his thoughts on the previous owner of the adjacent restaurant, and the future plans for his lodge and the surrounding buildings. In addition, we learned about John’s philosophy on staffing a business, recent employee issues (and subsequent firings), and also managed to pick up a tip on some Tibetans in the area who were playing a hand in the handicraft trade. All of this information flowed from John without the conversational friction of prompt, and, the one piece of information that we thought useful (Tibetan handicrafts) turned out to be a misguided lead; Later the next day, we learned that the only Tibetans in the area were on “Fashion Street” peddling the latest in cut-rate Indian apparel. John is an incredibly nice guy with a great lodge (and excellent service…he literally broke into his neighbor’s store to get us late night sodas) and I highly recommend staying at his place in Ernakulum (get the A/C room!).

So, Fort Cochin is a town that seems to exist for no other reason than tourism. Fish pushers, souvenir stalls, ice cream stands, lodges, and restaurants all put the good foot forward to serve the holidaymakers. If you are craving a Greek salad with feta or a steak with chips, you are in the right locale, however, if you happen to be craving a spicy aloo mutter or a crispy dosa, you are out of luck. The lack of Indian food, percentage of white folks, prices and Portuguese architecture will make you wonder if you are still in India…that is, of course, until you step in a pile of cow dung or get “honked at” for no apparent reason. All up, it was an enjoyable day to wander around Fort Cochin and see the Chinese fishing nets, European architecture, massive Christian influence, and extremely playful goats wandering around. We dipped into the handicraft shops periodically to laugh at the outrageous prices, but spent most of the day wandering around in the hot sun.

Our second night in John’s Lodge was considerably more comfortable than the first as mom (aka: Nicole) subsidized our room upgrade which included a more spacious room, a bigger bed, T.V. and A/C. Rozy got comfortable very quickly with her Hindi TV channels and A/C and Nicole and I had our evening chat with John that lasted for about an hour. It was a nice slice of comfort after a long day in the heat, however, the heat wave that greeted us at the front door the next morning required a bit of acclimatization as we were all used to the chilly environment.

Departing Fort Cochin, we had loose plans to head on towards the backwaters in the town of Kollam, then, keep on heading to the southern tip of India to the little holy town of Kanyakumari, to view both the sunset and sunrise over the ocean. The plan was something like: spend a couple days in Kollam, then spend just a night in Kanyakumari to watch the earth rotate the sun, then, bolt it up the east coast as Nicole only had a couple of days left before her flight departed out of Chennai. Braving the public bus once again, we caught a KSRTC beauty bound for the Kollam, one of the famous jumping off points for the famed Kerelan backwaters.

STATISTICS

• Flights taken = 9
  
• Intercity trains rides taken = 15
  
• Intercity bus rides taken = 33
  
• Times lost = 18
  
• Total instances of diarrhea = 6
  
• Total number of requests for pictures with Daniel = 35
  
• Total megabytes of pictures taken = 30,480
  

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Photos

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Comments

[yogesh]

I know those goats! i've met them when i was in Cochin in 12/2006. Did you make it to the waterfalls of that area?