kochi

Our final stop in Kerala was Kochi. We heard good things about the place and I had been reading how its pretty much the best place to ride the backwaters. We decided to stay for only 2 nights. We left Varkala before dawn broke and hit the train for a smooth 3 hour journey north. After being driven around on the island in a tuktuk we finally found an alright cheap room in a house. After getting lunch, gieves went back to the room to sleep and I took an adventure around fort cochin. This area has tons of amazing culture. There is a lot of European and British-ruled era architecture. Everything is pretty spread out so it makes for nice long walks. The Northern tip of fort cochin is filled with huge Chinese fishing nets and little wooden stores with tons and tons of little trinkits. This, in fact, is the town I saw my first ‘Merry Christmas’ sign! Kochi and Goa actually have a lot of Christians inhabiting the towns. Being in a tropical place for the whole season makes it not seem like Christmas can really be near at all, but it was a nice thing to see out here. For the following day, we had booked a half day boat tour of kochi then a half day of backwaters. After falling asleep oh so early that night, I awoke at 630 feeling like death. I had a temperature of 101 degrees and felt so achy. It was Gieves turn to go out and get water and other stuff for us, and when he returned he wasn’t feeling too great either. I slept through the whole day, woke up around 6 and decided to try and go with g to get some soup. My temp went down a little bit and I felt like I needed something in my stomach. When we got there and ordered, however, I started feeling worse and worse and left before I even took a bite. By the time I got to the room I was vomiting and right back in bed. Slept more. After sleeping pretty much 36 hours straight total, I awoke and felt so much better, but weak. We grabbed some food, and headed to do just a half day backwaters tour before we had to catch an afternoon train for a 16 hour ride to Goa. The backwaters were absolutely amazing. We drove about 40 minutes from kochi to the best place to go out on the waters. Even though we were both just feeling better from being sick, it was great to be outside under the palm trees in a boat. We rode through thin canal waterways that led to huge paddy fields. We stopped in 3 different villages. One village the men were hand making rugs with huge, rusty machines. In another, an older woman was taking the hair/threads from the inside of coconuts. She attached them to this wheel and kept moving back. As this man cranked, the hairs became twine like. They showed us necklaces they made from them and it was truly amazing. In another village we drank some amazing chai and sweet pasteries. Kochi wasn’t too shabby, even though it was short and sweet and I was sick for a big part of it. The backwaters and sweet architecture really made up for it.