twenty-one – days seven to nine: fort kochi and kerala

Emily and I arrived about 10:30am to the Ernakulum train station and took an auto rickshaw to Walton’s Home Stay in Fort Kochi.  Mr. Walton was very helpful by giving us maps with restaurant and site-seeing recommendations upon our arrival.  We dumped our stuff in the room (which was very nice), took quick showers, and grabbed lunch at the Kashi Art Café. 

After eating sandwiches and fresh fruit, we embarked on a self-guided historical walking tour of Fort Kochi.  Fort Kochi came under Dutch control in the mid 17^th century, and so many of the sites have strong Dutch influences.  We visited the Santa Cruz Basilica and a building that once belonged to the notorious Dutch East India Company. 

We peered through the locked gates into the Dutch Cemetery and stopped inside the St. Francis Church.
 

It was nearing 2pm, and Ayse, Emily’s roommate in Dharwad, was about to join us for the weekend in Kochi.  While waiting near the bus station, Emily drank fresh coconut milk.   

Ayse arrived and after getting her settled into Oy’s Home Stay, we jumped in a rickshaw to explore the historical Jew Town neighborhood of Kochi. 

It was Shabbat, however, so the synagogue was closed, but we walked around and visited the Dutch Palace and purchased spices and teas from a local shop.  We headed back to Fort Kochin where Emily and I checked out the museum at the Bishop’s House while Ayse got a snack at the Garden Café.  The museum was filled with many Christian artifacts, but the most exciting item to me was a Manichithrathazhu lock.  Kerala is the name of the state in which Fort Kochi is located, and the Manichithrathazhu door lock is an old traditional lock which adorned the doors of Kerala’s mansions.  This one in particular paid tribute to the various religious represented in Kochi at the time: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  

After walking around Fort Kochi a bit more, the three of us decided on Oceanos for dinner, a restaurant specializing in Keralan seafood.  We ordered fish curry, coconut veg curry, and Keralan rice.  Exhausted and full, we went to bed.

On Sunday, we took a tour (with Wilson Tours) on a non-motorized boat through the Keralan backwaters.  Our hosts punted us through the tributaries and canals, as we sat back and watched the shores pass by.   

We stopped at a village where women were making rope from the outside of coconut shells.  It was pretty amazing to watch!

 

We stopped for lunch on a small island and ate a traditional vegetarian Keralan lunch with our hands (in typical Indian fashion) off banana leaves. 

The most interesting part of our day-long trip was after lunch during which we took smaller (8 person) canoes through the much smaller waterways which ran through the villages in Kerala.  

Although the scenery was quite beautiful and seeing the homes of Indians who live there was fascinating, it was yet another voyeuristic aspect of this populous nation.  There is no privacy in India.  Everything can be done and is done in public.  As we drove through villages, towns, and cities throughout my travels in India, I witnessed adults and children bathing, urinating, washing clothes, sleeping, and going about their daily activities all along the roadsides.  As our canoes glided silently by the backwater homes, we passed people bathing and washing clothes in the waters, and I couldn’t help but feel like someone peering into a fishbowl and ogling what was inside. 

We stopped for a short tour of a working spice farm where we saw nutmeg and cinnamon trees, pepper, and two types of basil plants and smelled lemon and mint leaves.  We also saw some wildlife.

After returning to Fort Kochin around 5pm, we took quick showers and headed to Jasmin Villa for a Keralan cooking class.  It was just the three of us - Emily, Ayse, and me – and Jasmin, our teacher.  She runs the home stay and has been conducting cooking classes for five years.  It was a demonstration only class, although we did each take turns rolling out the chappati, but this was fine because the class was so intimate and we could easily ask questions and peer into the kadai.  We learned to make chappati, coconut veg curry, vegetarian pulao, dal, vegetable raita, pappadum, spiced fried okra, and garam masala.  Afterwards, the four of us sat down together and enjoyed the most amazing meal.  For dessert, Jasmin sliced up the most delicious pineapple I have ever eaten. 

On Monday morning we grabbed breakfast with Asye at Kashi Art Café and attempted to watch the men work the Chinese fishing nets. 

Unfortunately, while we were able to see the nets, we weren’t able to see them in action; we were either too early or too late for high tide.  Instead, we went shopping and each bought pashminas.  Emily and I then parted ways with Ayse in order to hop in a taxi to the Kochi airport for our flight to New Delhi.  First, though, Emily and I stopped at the Paradesi Synagogue in Jew Town.  What struck me as the most interesting were the dozens of huge chandeliers in the shul.  But the rest of the temple was quite lovely, too.

We spent the rest of our afternoon flying to Delhi on JetLite, and we settled very nicely into the Hilton Garden Inn in Saket courtesy of Dad’s points.  This hotel was the absolute lap of luxury after our week on the road in South India!  We went across the street to the mall food court for dinner.  Although the food court wasn’t glamorous, I did have a delicious dish of channa batura while Emily ate a thali for two by herself.  We went to bed early, as our driver was to arrive at 5am for the next day’s adventures.