Kochi

At the end of October we were lounging our days away in Palolem.  But we had to make a move south.  With a heavy heart we made reservations for a train to Kochi. With the early start this necessitated we grabbed a taxi to Madgaon and its mainline station.

An hour later we arrived at one of the nicest hotel rooms since we travelled through Ahmedabad.  Nice to be expected, but we were the only Non-Indians staying.  Venturing out to get our bearings, we checked on the configuration of the station and looked for a local restaurant.  The town itself is not worth visiting. The only distinguishing feature seemed to be the very active market for second-hand blenders!

The next morning the train to Kochi was two hours late by the time it got to us.  Here the Indian Rail app is very helpful. Allowing us to delay our departure from the hotel, having first hidden the last of the previous night’s discovery of 90p rum.  What we had signed up for was a 12 hour journey to Kochi. But this time we were allocated a 2nd class coupe.

It wasn’t that time dragged, but it was a very long day. The train didn’t recover any of its lost time and we arrived in the dark.  Planning to only spend two nights here, as we are no fan of cities.  Having ventured out we took the new ferry to Fort, but something wasn’t right.  We were ill.  We never did find out what caused it. Started to feel unwell on the train we were no better the following morning.  By the time the time reached noon, I had full-blown Delhi Belly

Possibly feeling unwell coloured my opinion of Kochi.  I found it to be nothing more than a sprawling city. We returned to the room and attempted to ‘fix’ ourselves.  For only the second time on this trip, we resorted to pizza, this time delivered to our room.  We had been in Kochi for 24 hours and had only managed to photograph the Chinese Fishing Nets.

The following morning unwell and uninspired we headed to the station. Today we caught a local train which would take us all the way to very tip of India.  To Kanyakumari.  We were now heading towards Diwali and all of India was on the move

A few days later we were back in Kochi. 

We had to pass back through this town on the way back up the country.  Embracing the opportunity to try exploring it again, now we were feeling a little better.  We left our luggage with the storage facility at Ernakulam station and went out again into the city.  This time we returned to Fort Island on the old public ferry and took a tuk-tuk to the Jewish area.  We had been convinced that Kochi was worth more of our time.

We started at Mattancherry Palace, built by the Portuguese in 1555. Renovated by the Dutch, it is also known as the Dutch Place. The main shopping road was ‘Jew town’. Very atmospheric, but it mainly sold the same goods we had seen all over India. Here, however, they were three times the price.  Disappointing because we wanted to see something different, something unique, something authentic.  We escaped to the Ginger House restaurant.  This appeared to be a restaurant inside an enormous antique shop.  We chose a table overlooking the water. A gorgeous and pricy lunch with a perfect view over the water….. to the Industrial Mattancherry Wharf.

We had given Kochi a second chance and we still didn’t like it!

Later we collected our luggage. The hunt was on to find today’s random bus stop to pick up our A/C coach to Varkala.  Today the bus stop was helpfully described as ‘being on a road junction’.  Arriving on foot we discovered it was probably the busiest road junction in India. There was no indication of a bus stop or in which direction our bus may be travelling.  Persevering we eventually discovered that the Lottery ticket seller knew the bus we wanted. He even knew its number, its route across the junction, what time it arrived and departed daily.

There is a lot of help and kindness in India for its International travellers….. but you do have to also put the work in to find the right person to ask……

India is not very good at many things, and bus stops are one of them.