Kerala Day 4: Who Thought We'd Spend a Whole Day Exploring Fort Kochi!

This was probably the least pre-planned of all the days of our vacation, causing some anxst to Vijay, who revels in jam-packed days mapped out to the nth degree. We envisaged a couple of hours in Fort Kochi and that aside, we knew we had to end the day at Kothamangalam. We had considered visiting Athirampally Falls en route to Kothamangalam, but our geography was awry and that would have required a major detour (we thus learnt the cardinal rule of never estimating driving times in India from "crow fly" map scanning!)

After checking out of our Homestay, we headed back to the Fort Kochi pier. The private tourist desk at Ernakulam had given us a walking tour of Fort Kochi which turned out to be quite lovely. Fort Kochi is a Kerala city with a distinct European flavour reflecting successive occupation by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. Wandering through the historic buildings of Old Harbor House (left photo), Pierce Leslie Bungalow (right photo), and Koder House was atmospheric and evocative. Old Harbor House with its checkerboard marble floor, gaping windows of Belgian glass and charming bridge-way stretching across to the adjacent building was a particular standout, while the red-brick Koder House portrayed its own special history (its original owner, Mr. Samuel Koder was considered the patriach of Kochi's Jewish community). They are all now hotels, but wonderfully preserved. It appears that the early 1800s were a prolific time of real estate development, and many of these buildings date from that period, including the Delta Study, of brilliant white hue, and sensitively adapted into a modern-day high school.

Adding to the charm of the walk was being collared by various merchants plying their bits and bobs along with a once in 5 minute approach by a seeming bystander for a tour of the Kochi sights (including auto drivers poking their heads out of their vehicles). Armed with our cameras, sneakers, sunglasses and guide book, we must have been the perfect prototype tourist fodder! One guy snared us with some cute looking straw hats that looked like something a Chinese farmer might wear. We bargained the chappy down to Rs50 each and Shobhita and Sarvesh were the happy owners of the headgear!

Further on, we came across St Francis Church, supposedly the oldest church in India (dating from around 1508) and the original burial place of Vasco de Gama, the commander of the first Portuguese contingent to colonise Kochi, opportunistically exploiting Kochi's ongoing feud with Kozhikode to nuzzle his way into power. We also passed the Vasco House, a rather decrepit looking homestay, but boasting the cache of purportedly being Vasco de Gama's first residence in Kochi. We wandered past the East India Dutch Company Headquarters (built 1740) and onto a beautiful beach which abutted the dutch cemetary and the few remaining ramparts of the now extinct Dutch Fort.

The feeling of a bygone era was palpable - the intrigues of capturing the lucrative Kochi Spice Trade, the sheningans of the East India company, the peril of the Europeans attempting to invade (commercially) a foreign land, the point where Vasco Da Gama must have landed in Kochi. To see the actual places of such events was quite galvanizing. So too was walking down Princess Street (one of the oldest streets of Fort Kochi) with many original architectural features (like columns, grills, roof decorations) still adorning the buildings. It was a bit like walking along some streets of Stratford-on-Avon, unchanged for centuries.

A sudden glance at our watches revealed it was 11.15. With a start, we remembered the Jewish Synagogue closed for a highly elongated lunch at Noon. In we bundled into our Indica and we were soon ducking and weaving our way through the traffic towards Mattancherry. The synagogue has a nondescript exterior of stone masonry aside from a clock tower engraved on its 4 sides in 4 different languages: Malayalam, Hebrew, Roman and Arabic. Only 11 Jews remain in Kochi, with many others having returned to the motherland. Nonetheless (or maybe for that reason), the synangogue is immaculately maintained with eye-catching combination of blue and white engraved floor tiles of Cantonese extraction, glass chandoliers hanging from the celiing and a central prayer area of resplendant bronze. Unfortunately, the crown jewels of the synagogue, 3 scrolls of the Torah and a copper-plated record from Kodangallur recording a grant from the 10th century monarch, Ravi Varman to the Jewish community, are kept under lock and key after an errant hand strayed uncontrollably some time in the past. We were duly kicked out of the synagogue on the dot at Noon and proceeded to wander the streets of Kochin's miniscule Jewtown area. It was fascinating to compare these antique and handicraft-laden streets with our saunter through the old Jewish quarters of Sevilla earlier this year. Kochi doesn't quite have the magic of the jewel of Andalucian Spain, but then again few cities do! Interestingly, the lady who was volunteering at the Synagogue said that her family had in fact fled from Southern Spain during medieval times, arriving at Cannanore from whence they moved to Kochi fleeing the Moors and Portugeuse. While they are fully integrated into Kerala life, they still make some eatables for which the recipies are preserved in Spanish!!!

As a final part of our Kochi tour we walked through the spice district, passing by the Pepper Exchange. Our work in Financial services in the US led us to knock on the doors of some spice merchants (wholesellers and traders) and we spend a fruitful hour chatting with them about their commodity trading in Rubber and Pepper, and the competition between the Futures Exchanges of Kochi and Ahmedabad. What an interesting world we live in, where culture and languages may differ, but the language of commerce (positions, hedges, limits, delivery in this case) is much the same.

From here, we made our way to one of Kochi's most storied relics: the Mattancherry Dutch Palace. In keeping with Kerala architecture, the palace does not overwhelm. It is not even as grand as Tripunithra's Hill Palace (which is definitely more like a Colonial Manor). That said, it is delicate and beautiful, especially in its intricate wood carvings along the windows and doors, the low ceilings in the main palace, and dark wooden supports to the ceilings. Much of the palace was being restored but there were some beautiful murals highly reminiscent in style/color to the paintings of Vadakkunathan. The portrait gallery of the Kings of Kochi were a thought-provoking collection. I say so because they were portraits of monarchs who had been vassals of a foreign power. There seemed (in our imagination) rather a sense of defeat or even slight futility ... what must it have been like to be the king of a nation, but only with the permission of Portugese, Dutch and English?

Our final destination was "Kairali", the Kerala State Handicraft Store chain in Ernakulam where Chitra indulged in buying a Kerala sari to celebrate the festival of Onam. Fittingly, we were treated to some college students engaging in a drumming parade, perhaps in honour of the start of Onam. The location of the marchers was slightly comical - at the corner of an IndianOil gas station adjoining a typically chaotic Ernakulam thoroughfare. Anywhere else on the planet, it would have been grossly incongruous, but in our beloved India, we barely raised an eyebrow!

This turned out to be our coup de grace. It was 5pm and high time we left for Kothamangalam. A wonderful day of discovery was behind us; an incredible day of birding lay ahead!