Cochin has a fairly old history. There are accounts of very early contact with the Chinese, from whom they learned to use these Chinese fishing nets which line the coast of Fort Cochin.

During the expansion of the European empires, the Dutch, the Portugese, and the English all conquered the area. As expected there are vestiges of all three cultures left behind in Cochin.
We lodged at the Malabar House. When we arrived, we discovered they had upgraded us to suite and decorated the bed for our anniversary.

We stayed in the old Fort town section. It is where the Chinese fishing nets are, it is also where Vasco de Gama is said to have to come to live after his explorations. There are some beautiful "Rain Trees" which are all over the area, they seem like they would be native to India, but they were brought from Brazil along with several other trees and plants by Vasco de Gama. The first day, after arriving in the late afternoon, we walked out to the Chinese fishing nets and it was starting to get dark,


Monday morning we went for a walking tour around the area. We started out by the fishing nets, and progressed up to several local monuments from the European empires. We saw the Vasco de Gama house.


In the evening we went and saw a Kathakali dance performance. We arrived at 5pm, and had reserved seats in the front row. This wasn't really hard as there were only about a dozen of us for the performance. It's low season in Kerala now. The theater could seat at least 100. The actual dancing didn't start till 6ish, but we got to watch them put on the makeup,



There is no speech in the performance other than the singer who tells the story in the background. The dancers tell the story with hand movements

The next day we went for a 'tour' with Selim, a rickshaw driver who hangs out in front of the Malabar Hotel. He met us the first day and tried to get us to take a tour with him. We were only interested in walking that day, so we put him off, but I can highly recommend him. He really knows a lot about Cochin and will take you to interesting places. He took us to a spice market. He is a neighbor of the owner, so he is allowed to take tourists inside to the various store and processing rooms. The market has been there for hundreds of years,


Here he Selim stirring lime they use to coat the ginger which they dry for Ayurvedic uses here.

They had all kinds of spices here: Cinnamon,







He took us to a museum in the Dutch Palace which is being renovated. Part of the un-renovated section has these beautiful murals, which are deteriorating. No pictures allowed, I sure hope they get them preserved soon. We also stopped in the local laundry,

We also stopped by a small 'factory' where they make papad--a fried bread, you can buy stacks of the dried dough in the store. Here she is making the dough into little rounds,

Next day we went home as it really started to rain.
1 comment:
Looks lovely... glad you got to get away too!
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