We still had another 3 full days in Kochi remaining from where I finished last time, so in this blog I’ll cover those days and our journey up into the Western Ghats mountains to the east of the Keralan coast.

Thursday –

Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday there was what must have been a huge rain storm pass over Kochi. We were both in too deep a sleep to get up and open the shutters, but the racket outside was tremendous. However, on getting out of bed on Thursday morning, the streets were already completely dry. I would have thought I’d dreamt it if it wasn’t for the fact we both were woken by the storm.

The rain did seem, however, to have broken the humid weather that we struggled through the day before. We had breakfast on the roof, which usually was made up from a curry with some bread, some (delicious) banana pancakes or fritters, and toast with jam. We were joined by a few guests who sat on separate tables, and often one or two crows that managed to make their way through the nets put out to stop them and steal a fritter.

After breakfast, we walked up into Fort Kochi for a coffee and mango lassi in one of the cafes before heading to the ferry port to catch the shuttle ferry into Ernakulam on the opposite bank. The ferry ticket was about 20/- (20p) each, and it drew up almost as soon as we arrived, and set off as quickly. The ferry took us across the busy shipping and naval harbour to the jetty for the mainland city of Ernakulam.

Ernakulam felt much more like a typical Indian city (using our short time in Mumbai as a model) compared to Fort Kochi. The roads were busy, there were clothing shops and food stalls everywhere, and the whole atmosphere was one of people going about their varied day-to-day business rather than the meandering and lounging that was much more common across the bay. In amongst the shops and tower-blocks, however, there were still quite a number of large and well-maintained churches which attests to the large number of the local population that are still practicing Christians.

We had come into Ernakulam to see the Kerala Folklore museum which had been recommended, and because Ellie had booked a private dance class to learn the basics of a style of Indian classical dance called Odissi which was run at a dance school not far from the ferry jetty. We had, however, a couple of hours before this started so we took the brand new metro train into the brand new shopping mall that was a few stops away. Both metro and mall were air-conditioned, spotless and gave the sense that Ernakulam was a city with quite a lot of money.

After eating in the mall, we headed back on the metro and found the dance school. During the hour’s lesson, I wandered around the few surrounding blocks and went to find a coffee. I found a cafeteria style cafe which are quite common and specialise in serving the ubiquitous lunch-time thalis to locals, and sat down. Local coffee, when you can get it, tends to be made with not a lot of coffee and quite a lot of sugar and condensed milk. After drinking two of these and walking back via an English language second hand book market, I met Ellie outside the school and we rickshawed the length of Ernakalum to the Keralan Folklore Museum in the south of the city.

The museum was an old 3 storied wooden building which was crammed full of a range of artifacts, painting and other curiosities from South India. It made for a gently enjoyable 45 minute walk through the corridors, though there was a bit of lack of curation or commentary on most of the pieces exhibited. Additionally, they were selling quite a few of the artifacts which seemed a little unusual for a museum. The life size models of Jesus Christ were especially unsettling, but fortunately not for sale.

We were at the right end of the city to rickshaw back to Fort Kochi across the bridges that link it to Willingdon Island and then to the mainland. Once home and rested, we set out once more into Fort Kochi and to the same Kerala Kathakali Centre theatre as we had gone to the previous night, this time to watch the martial arts demonstration.

The martial art being demonstrated was called Kalaripayattu, which involved some hand-to-hand fighting, but largely fighting using a variety of weapons. The man doing the MCing for the night advised us on several occasions that all the metal was actually sharp and the martial artists routinely sustained injuries. The show itself was a mix of athleticism and skill with a touch of the (unintentionally) comic. There was fighting with knives, swords, long sticks, and a formidable whip made from flexible double edged metal. At one point, one of the younger artists lost his grip of his stick, which went catapulting into the audience. At other points, when the adults needed a costume change or break, a young boy of about 10 was pushed onto the stage to attempt handstands with varying degrees of success and to spin his miniature fighting stick around. It was so enjoyable/alarming that I forgot to take any pictures, but I have tried to extract some photos from a couple of videos to give some sense of it. Once all the excitement was over, we found some dinner out at a local restaurant and walked back to bed.

Friday –

After several busy days back to back, we planned to do a little less on Friday and Saturday before heading up into the mountains on Sunday. Once we had breakfast, we attempted to go to a local mobile phone shop to get an Indian sim and mobile number. We’d found on a few occasions so far that having an Indian mobile number could’ve been useful, so we’d resolved to try and get one given a few people in Munroe Island had told us it was easy for them at the airport. That said, once we sat down with the shop assistant we found ourselves in a time-loop where she explained that we needed an Indian number to recieve a One Time Password to allow us to buy a sim, to which we tried to explain that we needed the sim to get the Indian number.

We went round in this circle at least 5 times, until finally she took my phone number and the address of the homestay, and told us we would receive a message. It was clear that she felt her work was done so we left the shop, and immediately afterwards I received a Whatsapp from an unknown number saying they would be at the homestay at 12 noon to give us a sim card. There was no attempt to not make it look entirely dodgy, so we politely declined the offer and gave it up as a bad job.

We went back again to Fort Kochi for coffee via the delicious lassi man we had visited on the way to Jew Town a few days earlier. After eating lunch in a local cafe serving cheese toasties and samosa chaat (samosas with yoghurt and onions, also delicious), we walked home, stopping en route to pick up some clothes from a tailoring shop. The place had been recommended to us by another guest at the homestay, and the industrious lady who ran it could make any garment out of any fabric. I had a couple of pairs of linen trousers made and Ellie a dress, which all fit perfectly.

That evening, we went out (yet again!) to the Kathakali centre, this time to watch some actual Kathakali. Kathakali is a South Indian style of play where the costumes and make-are outrageously flamboyant, and everything is mimed with hand movements and facial expressions rather than spoken. The first hour of the performance was spent watching the actors sit on the stage and put on their own incredible stage make-up. I felt this was the best part in truth; it was very difficult to work out what was going on in the Kathakali itself, but it certainly was a spectacle and thankfully was only an hour long.

Given that the Kathakali started earlier in the evening that the other two performances we had seen, we took the opportunity to go to the local wine bar before dinner in one of the more upmarket hotels. Alcohol wasn’t served in any restaurant we had been to in Kochi, and we hadn’t had wine since we left the UK. The wine was all Indian, and hit the spot on a hot and humid evening. After a dinner at one of the many local restaurants, we walked the now familiar stretch from Fort Kochi back to the homestay.

Saturday –

By Saturday we felt that we had done the Fort Kochi area pretty well, so spent most of the day revisiting some of our favourite cafes and other spots around the town. After coffee from the best cafe we had found, we headed to the pool in the Cochin Club to spend another couple of hours in the water and reading by the poolside. We were joined by an Indian family, the son of whom had just come back from a university exchange year at Kingston University, and had recently accepted a job as a tea-taster in Kochi.

From there, we went back to the art gallery garden cafe for lunch. I left Ellie here as she had booked a 2.5 hour dance workshop that was being run that afternoon in one of the gallery’s rooms. I headed back to the homestay to do some tutoring, then walked back in to meet Ellie somewhere we could sit and I could finish writing the previous blog post. Once published, we went to a local roof-top restaurant serving seafood curries and some Keralan dishes, which turned out to be some of the best food of the trip. It was a fitting end to the last day in Kochi.

Sunday –

We got up early Sunday morning for the 7.30am English service at the Anglican church in Fort Kochi. The service was pretty much identical to those we’d been to in the UK, other than the vicar seemed to have no other members of the clergy to help him and we were about 3 metres away from Vasco De Gama’s tomb. We’d missed breakfast at the homestay by the time the service had ended so we had a delightfully Western breakfast out in Fort Kochi given we were unlikely to have much food other than Keralan cuisine up in Munnar.

We packed up the room and said goodbye (but not for long since we are staying in Greenwoods again for a night before we fly to Udaipur) to Sheeba and Ashley. We’d booked an Uber Intercity to take us to Munnar, which was nearly a 4 hour drive away. Neither of us much fancied the bus which apparently flew up the mountain roads, and the journey only cost £40 by Uber which, considering I’ve paid nearly £20 to get from Clapham to Battersea, seemed pretty reasonable.

Our driver spoke next to no English but was very friendly, and we were soon away out from Kochi, through Ernakulam and up into the ribbon towns that line the roads going up to the tea plantations in the Western Ghat mountains. We never really passed through any areas of countryside without shops, stalls or stands lining the roads, and no-one tended to drive more than about 50mph. That said, the road markings were at best a suggestion and the road was filled with all manner of cars, buses, richshaws and farm vehicles.

Suddenly, after 2 or so hours, the Western Ghats sprang up. The hills looks impossibly steep and came out of nowhere. Before long we were climbing steeply into the mountains and the trees changed from coconut palms and banana plants to dense forest on either side of the road. After an hour or winding our way through mountain roads, we eventually turned off the main highway and onto a local road that led to our accommodation for the next 5 nights, The Shade.

The Shade was run by Santhosh, a kindly Indian man of very few words but clearly very proud of his beautiful homestay and even more beautiful gardens beneath it. We were shown to our room, which has a breathtaking view across the mountain valleys on two sides. The Shade is a few miles out from the busy hub of Munnar, but only a short rickshaw into the local town where we headed after dropping our bags to get a late lunch.

We found a “multi-cuisine” restaurant, which usually means South and North Indian food, and ordered. I had a biriyani which came wrapped in banana leaf and has been something of a staple for me in restaurants of unknown quality since arriving in India. Ellie, wisely, had the sweetcorn soup given we were due to be having dinner back at The Shade in just a couple of hours.

Once home, we unpacked and exercised, then headed up to the dining room for dinner. The nights are beautifully cool, around 20C, compared to what we have been used to. It transpired that, for this night at least, we were the only guests in the homestay and so we had the dining table to ourselves. Santhosh served us the usual array of curries, breads and rice and agreed with us a rough outline of the next few days.

And so, we are now up in the mountains and, for the first time since we arrived, away from the sea or rivers. When I write next, I should be able to cover everything we do in Munnar before moving back down towards Kochi, and the end of our time in Kerala.

Until then,

Rob xx