Day 8
Hung around Cherai. Cycle ride and swimming.
Day 9
There was a tremendous storm last night. The Gods were certainly angry. There are actually so many here at least one must be angry at some time. The electrics cut off where I was staying and the trees were swaying about like a drunken sailor on leave after months at sea. Coconuts were blowing around and dropping willy nilly, crashing to the floor like a World War I barrage.
It was excellent, the power of nature.
The storm left as rapidly as it came leaving the streets cleaner of dust and sand but replaced it with palm fronds, dead coconuts but a fresher smell. The roads didn’t take long to dry but when I set off early this morning there were still odd puddles here and there.
First, a photo of the woman who cleaned the house and her sons. I didn’t catch their names. The lads were little horrors. I initially caught them riding my bike around the car parking bit at the front. They then wanted to come in to the house to ‘play’. So I locked the gate. They didn’t get the hint and kept climbing over, ringing the door bell asking for things like salt and sugar and spices.
I took a ride around the area in the morning, it’s certainly not the clean and unpolluted idea you get from brochures of the backwaters.
There’s also been a recent local election.
As mentioned, I spent the afternoon mainly swimming and walking along the beach wondering if I could survive on a desert island eating just coconuts.
Probably, if I could get chocolate as well.
I loaded up the bike, which I’d had to keep inside the house because of the kids, and set off just before 7am hoping it was cooler. It was, compared to when I headed north and didn’t set off until 10am. By that time any movement made your toenails sweat and if the human body is about 60% water then if you weigh, say 100kg, which few of us do but bear with me, then 60kg more or less is water.
That means within half an hour of setting off I lost more weight, it felt like about 20kg I sweated out, than any diet I’ve ever been on.
Shame I had to put it all back on again by drinking in order not to die.
I soon hit the chickens.
And a very scared looking young lady. I’m sure the hunk would look after her though.
The typical road I journeyed along.
I bet he gets fed up, and looks like it, with having to sit there all day.
I bet he’s hot as well in that glass box.
That’s a tree and a half, isn’t it?
It was just across from where I stopped for breakfast, you can see the place bottom right.
The Henley Hotel.
A very posh name.
Remember how I said sometime that just because the sign says it is a hotel doesn’t mean in the slightest that it has rooms for the night? This didn’t obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it again.
The menu on the back wall. Have a look and I’ll mention something about it. I’m sure you’re all eager to learn.
You know how when you are on holiday and eating out a lot you pick up a menu and often if you are in the same area and the dishes are relatively similar you check one or two items to see how the price compares with what you eventually realise is ‘normal’? You pay a premium in a tourist area and the further away from it you go the price comes down, as you would expect. Eventually the cost comes down far enough that you know the place is set up for locals, that is with whom they do their business.
This is such a place, at the side of the road.
I can tell because nearly everywhere does tea. Coffee you don’t get in the north so you can’t look at that. Neither do you get masala dosa, so checking that price only works in the south. Most will do a biryani, usually vegetable so I look at that as well. What is more prevalent in the north are generally dishes with potato, in the south it is rice. Aloo Gobi, potato and cauliflower, is a standard dish northwards, and breads such as roti, chappati, pori/puri and porotta/paratha are most everywhere.
Best first to check the tea. Between five and ten rupees a cup is what you would pay from a roadside stall. There are currently about 75 rupees in a Euro, easier sometimes for me is to think of 100 per English pound, but it isn’t always that accurate, though it gives an idea especially with large sums.
The masala dosa is 35 rupees. Yep, good. Still cheap where I’ve been so far but those places catered to tourists as well.
All the breads are the right price and the veg biryani is the same as the egg one just above it, 70 rupees, but you can’t make it out too well. These are the prices for the locals and what they would pay.
By the way, you know when you go out for an Indian and choose a chicken korma because it’s quite mild, creamy and coconutty, so that you don’t spoil your meal by having something too hot, because you are a wimp and a wuss but still want to say you ate something exotic?
You can get it here as well but you’ll have to look for variations on the word. I didn’t try it but I think two thirds of the way down where it says ‘Veg Kuruma’, is the one.
I wasn’t sure what to have, I didn’t want anything big and they hadn’t any dosas so I just asked for veg, no meat and what did they have? The lad/waiter told me, of which I understood none of it, but I still nodded my head as though it was just the thing and said that would be fine. Bear in mind also that it was still breakfast time so things like the biryanis would be unlikely to be served, just breakfast stuff. You can just see the clock in the menu photo and it reads, I think, 9.15.
I ended up in simple terms with two rounds of bread, a pea curry and a chickpea curry. None were hot/spicy. Well, they tasted of curry, but in a morning nothing is likely to blow your head off, nor make you consider throwing the bog roll in the freezer for the next day, nor leave you feeling someone has thrust a red hot poker into your tonsils.
The cost was 20 for the bread and 15 for each of the two small curries. A total of 50 rupees, two thirds of a euro.
I’d just missed the ferry so I waited until it returned and slipped back over into Fort Kochi.
Some quite forceful ‘graffiti’ turned up as I was making my way through the town.
I thought this man was taking piss or exposing himself. I was just about to jump in when I realised he had a camera.
I wandered through. Near the ferry terminal is a tourist tat area.
Two boilers used to power cranes. Not now though, obviously.
Nearby is the Kathakali Dance centre.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KathakaliI was so preoccupied I ended up in a circle coming back to the same ferry as people were getting off. I thought that can’t be right and then I realised it was a different ferry at a different jetty.
I arrived at the hotel a little early and left my bag there whilst I nipped for something else to eat. Upon my return I was shown to my room. I’d booked a room with a balcony, but I couldn’t see where it was. The proprietor pulled back the curtains behind the bed, where there was a door. That opened inwards.
I mentioned there might be a problem, half expecting him to say that I did have a balcony, as per the room booking, but it doesn’t mean you can get on to it. Just have it.
He took me to another room that does have access without saying anything.
To finish off, here are the standard taxi charges to get from Fort Kochi to other points. Convert them as you will.
Just to give you an idea, it says Goa is 1800km away. Chennai is 1500km. What they actually mean is that is the mileage for a return journey as the taxi has to come back empty. I bet it does, but nevertheless, if you want to pay that much, so be it. Also, even for adding on a trip to the driver’s mothers on the way back, they are a couple of hundrend kilometres out.
So a taxi to probably Panjim in Goa, air conditioned mind you, would cost 290 euro/315 usd/230 ukp. Don’t forget, as it says, Interstate Permit tax, parking and tolls are extra.