Old Portuguese churches, clean tidy streets, and women in floral dresses. These are few of my favourite things that imbue Fort Kochi, Cochin’s historic heart, with an almost monasterial vibe and weirdly out-of-era nostalgia. By faith, temperament and looks, Cochin is more evocative of the Caribbean than Indian. Many older travelers like me yearn for places like Cochin. But after many trips missing, not finding, and unaware, we serendipitously discover them either by discernment or chance.
Not even the fanciest Instagram post nor the finest blog can fully describe Cochin. It seems true that it is part place and fully feeling. Which partly explains why I have only scant memory of my first visit about ten years ago, dropping by for one or two days before leaving for business to Hyderabad. I can only remember the sweaty heat, spices stored in historic houses and flashing sunset scenes of Chinese fishing nets along the lagoons on my way to the airport, with a taxi driver who enthused over the daily digestive benefits of consuming pineapple.
Diverting from my original plan of a modest loop around Malabar I end up spending my whole trip just in Cochin with a side train trip to Thrissur. For almost a week I allow myself to linger languidly in Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, taking in Kerala’s top sights and it’s five hundred years maritime history of enticing Europeans to Asia, starting with Vasco da Gama who landed on a beach north of here in Calicut on 20 May 1498.
To get beneath the harbour-city’s Malayali sheen and savour her true spirit, I must learn quickly to slow down my steps, my food and my thoughts.
Photographs and text copyright Kerk Boon Leng February 2024. All Rights Reserved
Did they confirm a certain very wealthy billionaire ex PM was from Kerala despite denials. What’s the worth of a person who denies even his ancestral home.
Did they confirm a certain very wealthy billionaire ex PM was from Kerala despite denials. What’s the worth of a person who denies even his ancestral home.