Kochi - Slow food in god’s own country

Just as we were starting to tell ourselves that we had enough of India (the tuk-tuk drivers and souvenirs shop sellers in Agra can be quite persistent), it was time for us to catch our plane to the South of India: Kerala.

Kerala, or God’s Own Country as Locals like to refer to it, is another planet altogether: the streets of Kochi have obvious traces from the 4 centuries of European colony so that we actually feel like the small streets of colonial Bogota. It’s more, unlike Agra or Delhi, here street dogs don’t chase holy cows to finish off some decaying rubbish on the streets since there are no street dogs, no cows and no rubbish… Incidentally, Kerala is apparently the state with the highest literacy rate and the lowest infant mortality of India!
So we quickly realize that we will enjoy our few days here not doing much, just walking the quiet streets and enjoying cappuccinos and ice teas in trendy art cafés.

Caro is just about to order another piece of carrot cake in our favorite café, 

where we were at least twice a day.

To cool off from the heat of our first day, we go to the sea front to watch the activity and the famous huge fishing nets and the South-American-like churches.

  

Here men carry a typical cloth: 

they either let long or wrap around which looks a bit like a giant diper

Exploring the streets of Kochi on rented bikes

 

 

Local version of the Tata bus: no windows... 

actually pretty good for ventilation

Bus timetable at the station. Here the local language is different 

from the North also with another alphabet. Although it’s just spoken by 3% of India,
it still represents some 30 million people.

On our third day here we took a ferry ride (3c€) followed by a bus to the next beach.

Here people seem to enjoy as much taking photos of us as we do of them. Some of them do it discreetly from far, some kindly ask you if they can have a picture with you, and other come straight to your face (or to your legs: as we realized they seemed to enjoy taking Caro’s knees since she was the only person in the street we could actually see the knees) and take a close up without asking or saying anything.

On the way to the beach, this family kindly (almost ashamed in fact) asked us 

to have a picture with them, so we took the same one!

As much as we closed the season in North India, we are opening it in South India and the high season only starts in November. So we had bright blue sky, the whole beach to ourselves, and the water was probably 28 or 30°C warm.

Self-made tent to get a bit of shade.

Just 100m back from the beach are the so-called “backwaters”. It’s a network of canals, and lakes of calm sea waters.

One of the delicacies here is obviously sea food: but not fresh like the way we know it. As we ordered a fish and kilo of squid in this restaurant accompanied with pineapple juice, the waiter went off to the street. 10 min later he came back with fresh fish from the jetty and 2 pineapples from the market to prepare them.

Fresh fish arrival: restaurants come here to get it as customers order it! Actually you could even buy it yourself and bring it to the restaurant, they’d cook it for you.