Fishing nets, palms and backwaters
Trip Start
Jan 14, 2008
1
4
Trip End
Feb 16, 2008
Cochin, India
Monday, February 11, 2008
Fort Cochin was my first stop in Kerala, another former Portugese and Dutch colony that also had a share of Chinese merchants and fisherman in days go by. I can't say I liked it all that much. The old Chinese fishing nets are interesting to watch working, and the seafood is pretty good, but there was something about the place I did not like. Perhaps it was old festy men appearing from nowhere at all times of the day offering me the 'gunge' for a 'good price'.
The major highlight of my time there was being interviewed by an Indian documentary team after I visited the Indo Portugese Museum. I actually thought the very small museum was a little rubbish - it contained a few maps of old Fort Cochin and a great number of religious artefacts that really were not overly interesting. But this documentary team were so enthusiastic about the place that I felt obliged to talk it up far more than I should have. The documentary is to be shown around India and parts of south-eat Asia. Who knows, my face could be shown around in those places talking something up that I thought was downright mediocre!
Vypeen Island just across from Fort Cochin is far more beautiful. Better buildings, nicer beaches and just a general better ambiance.
Also had a meal by chance with a French women who has been coming to India for thirty years. She actually got interested in India be her desire to practice her English. She got a penpal in India (still baffles me why it was not England) wrote to him for ten years and then got on a plane to meet him. She has come back every two years or so ever since. She now works with an NGO that raises money for poor children in Chennai to be given schooling and learn English. Interesting people you meet along the way.
I spent a night in Allephey, a nice place with beaches and canals which lead to the famous backwaters. A met a German guy on the bus down there and we hung out a bit. He was a bit thrfty despite his high salary (which he boasted to me about). We took a canoe ride in the morning to see some of the villages in the backwaters. The homestay manager promised us that we would get breakfast and a trip around the villages to see various activities close-up. And you guessed it, all we got was a canoe ride that started at a ridiculous hour and that was it. The old man who propelled us along for about three hours looked tired and sore by the end. I gave him a small tip of about 40 rupee because I could not be sure that the home stay manager was going to pay the old man his dues. My German friend only had 50 and 100 rupee notes on him when we finished to canoe trip. Despite my suggestion that he give him a fifty as it was three hours, he asked whether I had any other smaller rupees. He would pay me back later. I said that the 40 rupee was the last of my small notes. So the German guy refused to pay a tip! Fifty rupee is close enough to one euro. Nice enough kind of guy, but I just could not get over that he refused to give the guy a tip!
From Allephey I headed back to Cochin and then took a hair-raising bus ride up the mountains to the tea plantation town of Munnar. Amazing scenery. Rocky mountains ride high above the patchwork of green tea plantations, and water cascades through narrow gaps in the rocky mountains into streams and rivers below. I took a small trek through the tea plantations down to one of the waterfalls. I got quite lost enroute (the rickshaw driver and I had a miscommunication about directions...) and ended up walking into small villages, greeted with looks of 'what the fcuk are you doing here, westerner?'
That afternoon I took another State bus to Kumily, close to the Perihar Tiger Sanctuary. Tigers are rarely spotted; there are only 43 in the large sanctuary. I was not one of the lucky ones on this occasion. I still managed to see elephants, bison and deer on the boat trip roaming free in the "wild". An enjoyable enough two day stay there. I walked across the Kerala-Tamil Nadu state border the next morning to catch the bus to Madurai.
