Fort Kochi

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With a train booked for late at night we had another day on Fort Kochi. It's a great place to wander around and decided we would go to another suburb called Mattancherry. There is the old Royal Palace here. It tells an interesting story of how a Monachy over many centuries gets replaced and absorbed into a society. The Palace is now a museum and stores many of the Royal artifacts. The descendants of the monachy are now lacking in title and living as 'normal' citizens. Very thought provoking given an impending change of monarch in the Windsor family.

We spent a while wandering around the many antique shops in the area. We found a massive shop/warehouse where you could probably put together a whole house made up of old doors, portals, statues, furniture etc. It even had an altar to Jesus complete with fully carved body laid to rest in a bed.

Close by is a Jewish synagogue. When the Jews were scattered from Palestine many arrived in Kochi and established a settlement. The community has disappeared over time but there is still a functioning synagogue. Shelley and I both commented it was the first we had ever visited which felt quite strange being in India.

We found a great little cafe beside the river which served the most amazingly refreshingly drink, mint, ginger, sugar syrup and soda.

After a nice dinner we headed off to the railway station to catch our overnight train.

It ended up being two hours late but that meant we got to watch the end of the First ODI between India and England. That series looks like it's going to be a big scoring affair.

Our wait list was resolved but we got sleepers at different ends of the carriage. Fortunately a nice man in the sleeper next to mine agreed to swap. We managed to get to sleep looking forward to some relaxing beach time over the next few days.

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