3 days in cochin and im luving it

this was the house boat that i was on for the 7 hour tour into the village 38km from cochin

the magnificent santa cuz church in fort cochi

st francis church the oldest church in india

the made famous chinese nets in cochin

when i arrived into cochin from varkala. i saw the night skyline of it and thought wow , this is a port city. then i saw the serene atolls and islands surrounding it , then "new york city" hit me. then went i saw how shoppy the main district was , i was like "shopping urban style". yes in cochin i breathed a huge sign of relive that i have actually arrived into a little port city which looks like new york (like 50 years ago) with the main peninsula "fort cochi", ermukulum and vyspreen island coming together. plus the mini ports and all the big tankers stopping onto its ports. it was surreal and a sign of similarity.

checked into my hotel and was ready for the next day where i visited the main fort cochi island via boat. fort cochi has got geat influence from the portgugese , arabians , chinese and english. everywhere i go , there are tons of churches coming from the portugese style, to the english style to the france style kind of chruches. i thought , this was the largest amount of congregation i had seen of churches in india till now.

saw the famous chinese nets that i have always seen on tv and brouches and magazines. seeing it live and on tv or print i tell you was a totally different experience. you get to meet the local fishermen , people on the streets and also get greeted by the sunny weather in cochi.

there is also as recommended by the book and by uncle , the oldest known church in india , the st francis church. this church looked really simple but was the one of the only church that survived the ravages of time. it was in a traditional light blue in colour. its construction was very basic and it was a good medium sized church. but then to know that this church was the oldest and also the church that housed vasco and was founded by st francis xavier. i was enough to make me a very satisfied man and an eye opener.

the other church was the santa cuz balistica which was really majestic and bigger. clade in basic pink in the outside but handpainted with all sorts of colour on the outside. the look of the place was spectacular.

went over to do some more touristy stuff like visit the dutch cemetary as well as the dutch palace where there was a musuem showing the wall dispictions of the ramayana as well as some old artifacts and history murals which was just freshly renovated.

wanted to go to the basement where i read that they had this magnificent hindu stone curvings of an erotic nature but was told it was closed for renovations. saw these in books but would love to see him in real time though.

went off later to the jewish synorgue but was disappointed that it was closed for the afternoon and just decided to walk around jew town and look at some crafts and stuff.

according to the driver, there are now only 3 jewish family left in the fort and the other jews have moved on into other states.

the main island of cochi , ermukulum was bustling with activities and also the bazeer or what we call the fea market was alive and bursting! went shopping for a watch as my casio watch plastic strap broke and brought this super cheap watch for 1.20 sing dollar. which was a great deal and necessary as i would need to follow the timings in india then.

walking through the main shopping belt of cochin was really fun and uplifting as in cochin you dun get the regular touts and beggers and you pretty much have the pavement to yourself. also the power cuts were also not common here.

another thing to note was that there were lots of communist flags and castro images here. a relic from its history as a pro communist past too. its like the idiosyncracy of democracy and communism existing side by side. its really something which took me by surprise.

still cochi is a city of relieve and surprises , would surely come back here again.

now in this very squeezy internet cafe and waiting for my train up to bangalore.

there is one thing i learned was to use big cities as connection points to smaller harder to reach places such as mysore, so now my plans are always to go to large cities first then try to find connections within the vacinity and for this case it will be mysore , the palace of the great maharajastra.

ok thats all for these set of updates. miss all of you back home !