Backwaters and Beaches - Kerala

The following day, well rested and well fed, we set out to explore Ernakulum. We walked up to the top end, across to the river/sea front and back down to the hotel. The park we were aiming to see offered us merely a glimpse of its satisfyingly Vegas-esque signage and two securely locked gates. We saw little of the city as we were constanly watching our feet in order to avoid stepping onto or under one of the many tree roots, potholes and other assorted obstacles that make walking in India such fun. We returned to the hotel prepared, instead, to enjoy the luxury therein until our planned and very short journey to Fort Cochin the following day.

Vegas style signage in Ernakulam

Fort Cochin is the formerly colonial part of the Kochi conurbation. And it is even more colonial than most. Described in the Lonely Planet guide as “an unlikely blend of medieval Portugal, Holland and an English village grafted onto the tropical Malabar coast”, it is a delight of old houses, Chinese style fishing nets and big ships ghosting past the end of the street towards the oil refineries and port across the water. 

Medieval Chinese fishing nets alongside modern industry - Fort Cochin

Following our plan to book hotels via the internet as we went, we had chosen a traditional wooden Fort Cochin guesthouse for the following few days. And it was charming, if a little too old fashioned in places. 

Our hotel, Fort Cochin

View of the courtyard from the balcony of our hotel, Fort Cochin

View of the bedspreads, our hotel, Fort Cochin

We spent the following two days happily wandering the streets, watching cats and seagulls fighting over scraps of fish in the lee of the waterside fish market (talk about fresh: the fish were pulled from the nets, clubbed and gutted then plonked onto tables to await purchase) and sitting in the only bar we could find, a ceiling-fanned room full of mismatched chairs and tables and the sort of assorted clientele you would expect from the only bar in an economically varied area.

Fish 'market' Fort Cochin

Dutch Cemetery, Fort Cochin (complete with symbolic crow)

One of the highlights of our stay in Fort Cochin wasn’t in Fort Cochin at all, but on the other side of the island. The charmingly named Jew Town is a jumbled collection of (mostly touristy) antique and junk shops clustered around a 400 year old Synagogue. We walked across the island through increasingly small and poverty stricken villages (though each, it must be noted, had a library) and found that it was worth it, though mostly for the coffee and cake we had in a tea shop there.

Jew Town

Our next destination was Alleppey, where we intended to spend a night whilst we looked for a houseboat for the next leg of our journey. The houseboats of Kerala are the reason many people visit the area.  Designed like rice barges, they have between one and four bedrooms and you hire them, along with a driver and a cook, for two or more days, during which time you putter through the famous Keralan backwaters. In the end, we decided that the expense and the embarrassment factor of having a driver and a cook was just too much, so we opted instead to stay two nights in Alleppey and go instead on a half-day boat trip through the backwaters. Alleppey itself seemed at first to have little to recommend it. There was a phenomenal amount of traffic and the hotel room suffered from a constant and unbearable high pitched whistling sound from…well we never found out what it was from. We were re-roomed, which improved the noise, then we hastened down to the hotel bar in the basement. Which we loved. Despite the fact that Rachel was the only female in there and we were the only white faces, we felt welcome and enjoyed the copious amounts of food and beer to which we treated ourselves. It’s amazing how copious amounts of food and beer can brighten your view of an area! The following day, despite having slightly creaky heads, we set out on our tour of the backwaters. Trips through verdant, tropical backwaters seem to have become an integral part of our holidays: the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, the lakes and rivers of Chitwan in Nepal and the Li River in China to name but a few. The Keralan backwaters didn’t disappoint, from the first yellow flash of a water snake, through the frequent electric blue flashes of kingfishers to the final green flash of the local lighthouse was we docked back in town in the lowering dusk, it was fantastic. The locals travel by canoe, often with masses of shopping (the man carrying a huge, boxed LCD TV on the back of a crowded public canoe made me smile). 

Houseboats in the backwaters

Public canoe, backwaters

Fishermen, backwaters

We stopped at a shrine to a local Christian holy man who, the guide was at pains to repeatedly point out, did more than Mother Theresa for the poor many years before she was even born (a case of pureness envy?). When we reached the dock it was dark and we walked back through the town which seemed to in the middle of a carnival involving a man dressed as a Raj-era hunter chasing a man dressed as a tiger up and down the main street and in and out of shops with the rest of the town following close behind.

Our next stop was Varkala, one of the two famed beach towns of Southern Kerala, where we stayed in the grandly titled Varkala Marine Palace, which actually wasn’t grand at all, but was still extremely pleasant. Varkala Beach is mostly spread out along a cliff-top, with the beach itself at the southern end. We were staying right on the beach, with a hotel restaurant that looked out westward across the Arabian Sea. The first afternoon, we installed ourselves at a table with a great view and nursed food and beers for several hours until sunset. Which came eventually 5 minutes after clouds arrived and hid the horizon. Oh well. We dined on fish that had been still swimming less than an hour earlier and retired to our massive, mahogany, mosquito-netted bed (forgive the alliteration).

Hotel restaurant, Varkala Beach

Fishermen, Varkala Beach

Varkala Beach

Crab, Varkala Beach

Mongoose, Varkala Beach

Near sunset, Varkala Beach

It was in Varkala that we first witnessed the impressive sight that is Indians on holiday at the beach. Rather than the (much disliked by me) Western ideal of arriving, throwing down towels and lounging on the sand, they arrive in droves and then all stand in ranks facing the sea. And when the tide comes in, they continue to stand there, up to their knees, thighs or waists in water. A very strange sight. Possibly borne of the fact that the beach, in Varkala at least, was no good for swimming – the sea was just to wild. It was this fact that led Rachel to decide to cut short our stay there and head instead for Kerala’s other famous beach town Kovalam for our final three nights.

Local holidaymakers, Varkala Beach

The Arabian Sea (at least, some of it)

Local holidaymakers, Varkala Beach

Kovalam is spread over two bays. We stayed the first night on the beach with the most hotels, a strange looking affair given its naturally black sand. The hotel was perfectly comfortable and had a restaurant overlooking the sunset. Which, yet again disappeared behind clouds (and this time heavy rain) just before the main event. Again the beach became crowded with massed ranks of locals standing and facing out to sea. When it rained, they produced umbrellas and kept their position. Wonderful.

View from hotel restaurant, Kovalam Beach

The black sand of Kovalam Beach

Fishing boats, Kovalam Beach

Kovalam Beach

Local holidaymakers in the rain, Kovalam Beach

Some rocks

Fishermen in the rain, Kovalam Beach

Holidaymakers, Kovalam Beach

Kovalam Beach near sunset

Kovalam lighthouse

We decided that, as the next two nights were our last, we would spend them in luxury. So we booked into the Leela Kempinski, an impossibly luxurious hotel built into the headland that divided the two bays. I could write in detail about the time spent there, but to do so would be to delve into the Luxury Hotel Paradox – you spend a small fortune to travel to a distant country and the hotel is so nice that you don’t want to leave it. Apart from a trip to the off licence (the hotel bar was 5* in price as well as in appointment), we didn’t leave it. Suffice to say, it was very, very nice.

Road down to private beach, Leela Kempinski, Kovalam

Leela Kempinski Hotel, Kovalam

Leela Kempinski Hotel, Kovalam

Leela Kempinski Hotel, Kovalam

And that, apart from a three hour wait at Trivandrum airport where there is nothing to do but look at a wall, was the end of our Indian Adventure.

India - we had nearly as good a time as these people