This is more like it… green trees, happy smiling faces…
We were struggling to find a train from Chennai to Kochi (Cochin) so we took a flight instead, it actually worked out cheaper at £25 each (instead of around £50 each for 1AC, first class). We were sat next to a lovely guy from Kerala who works in New York, he saw us looking through the guidebook and offered us his local knowledge. Pretty much confirming our original idea of a plan, he happily sent us on our way (after ensuring we got on the right bus and knew where we were going). We arrived in Fort Kochi, ready to head to the hostel we’d picked out of the guide book only to be approached by a man with a business card who said he had a hostel really close by, we thought there was no harm in looking, and we’re glad we did. We stayed at the Niya Nest Homestay for 3 nights, lovely comfortable A/C room and great hosts, happy to arrange anything for us and provided us with 2 delicious breakfasts!
We had a rough idea of what we wanted to do in Fort Kochi, we mainly wanted to relax a bit and get our bearings after a stressful time in Chennai. We headed out on the first evening for some dinner and bumped into a man named ‘Dean’ (on business from Chennai) as we were walking along the beach afterwards, Dean was a lovely man, very genuine but almost too friendly, we didn’t want to be rude so we thought we’d stop for a quick chat when he called over to us…2 hours later, we knew his whole life story, had dinner plans for the next day and had walked pretty much the entire of Fort Kochi! He just wanted to share his knowledge and passion for speaking and learning English, unfortunately we never managed to meet up with him for dinner.
The next day we wandered around Kochi for a guide book food tour, starting at Kashi Art Cafe for breakfast (various omelettes and fruit juices), headed round the sea front to have a look at the old style Chinese fishing nets (pictures below). These nets are one of few left in Kerala and used for a fishing shallow, coastal waters. The fisher men that showed us the ropes (literally) said that the fishing was much better in the Monsoon season when waters were more turbulent.
After working up an appetite fishing we headed for the next guide book POI, the Teapot Cafe. A charming place situated down a side street in the centre of town. If the mad hatter was real, you would think yourself sitting in his front room, surrounded by odd tea pots of varying sizes and other tea ornaments littering the cafe’s side boards. We had a quick cheeky blueberry cheesecake, death by chocolate cake, a Jasmine and a Silver tips tea (splendid, and thoroughly recommended!).
We finished off our food tour of Kochi with dinner in Dal Roti. We were just about to settle the bill and got trapped by the sudden downpour that lasted for a good 20 minutes! Full, and with the rain having eased off we set off to our guest house, my shorts that we’d left out were miraculously dry…
Kalamandalam Vijayan Kerala Kathakali Centre
The next day we booked for a show of Kathakali, in a small (but tall) art centre about two minutes from the hostel. This local culture centre called Kalamandalam Vijayan Kerala Kathakali Centre had shows, classes and programs ranging from early morning meditation to early evening Yoga. I would recommend seeing both the Kathakali show and the Kalaripayttu (an Ancient form of Indian martial arts) demonstration – the martial arts really did it for me. The martial arts show is not advertised anywhere near as much as the Kathakali however. They train from the very early mornings to late into the day starting with a massage at about 0430 and training till dawn. They ranged from Knife defence/attack to pressure point areas and also defensive movements. Going to see a show would help to promote this form of martial arts as there are only 3/4 clubs left in Kerala, the only left in the world and they are held together by 4 families. I would have taken photos but I was mainly in awe and didn’t want to take my eyes off them as the demonstrations of each technique were short.
Some photo’s of the martial arts can be found on this link >> http://www.kathakalicentre.com/index.php?id=gallery. This for us was definitely the highlight of Kochi, so don’t miss it if you visit!
The Kathakali was also brilliant, it began with the actors very accurately applying their face paints (for an hour!) and an example of the expressive body facial motions we would see during the play. There is no dialogue during Kathakali all of the ‘speech’ is conducted through the expressive body motions. Some of the pictures below show the example facial expressions and some of the show itself.
The next day we headed to the Elephant Training Camp in Kodanand by Taxi. A two hour journey that wasn’t really worth the time or money in our opinion. If you are around the area, its probably worth the visit (at the current time 25INRpp, and 25INR for a stills camera, plus 10INR to park), but other then that we spent just less than an hour watching a couple of Elephants be scrubbed in the river! A bit of false advertising me thinks, as the adverts say you can help wash them, but a couple that was also there asked explicitly and were told they couldn’t. Oh well!
Next, stop Alleppey (Alappuzha), Venice of India…! Canoeing awaits!
