Fort Cochi

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On our second day in Fort Kochi we had a few logistics to organise. With only a week left and no beach time so far we decided to head to northern Kerala. I had read that the beaches here were as good as any of the ones further south but considerably less developed with only a few major resorts set up on them. We had to be back in Chennai to meet up with our return flight so after a bit digging around managed to find an airport in Mangalore, a city at the south end of the state north of Kerala, Karnataka, that had daily flights to Chennai. Got a ticket on Jet Asia, a subsidiary of Ethihad airlines, which got us back to Chennai 12 hours before our onward connection, I hope they don't cancel often.

We joined the dots back to Kochi and decided that we needed to have an Indian Rail experience. On our earlier trip, 27 years earlier, we used rail a lot because it was a cheap and relatively comfortable way of covering many miles. Our home stay had travel services advertised but the guy looking after it had gone away to a wedding for a day and the lady who cooked our breakfast each day didn't speak enough English to assist so we used a travel agent to try and get us the tickets. An overnight train was scheduled for the 7 hour trip departing at 10:15pm getting in at 5am. We could only get one sleeper berth confirmed in the air conditioned section and a wait list for the second ticket. The agent assured us that given our old age we would get the second sleeper allocated!

With another visit to the tailor to get a fitting for Shelleys dresses completed we took the ferry back in to the downtown part of Kochi called Ernakulam. I needed to stock up on clothes and Shelley had found a branch of Chennai Silks, a big clothes store we had visited in Madurai, where she had some unfinished shopping business.

The ferry ride was great with great views of the port and city skyline. The shopping was partially successful with the last two 5xl polo shirts (I haven't put on any weight but there was no way my usual size 2xl was going to fit) in store acquired. The undies range however had no options what so ever. Oh well, daily undie washing continues and being at the beach for the next few days I had my swimming togs to add to the mix.

Another ferry back to Fort Kochi and dinner finished the day with almost all goals ticketed.

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