Last year, I was watching a documentary on TV about the state of Kerala in South India, based mainly around the area of Fort Kochi. I thought it looked incredible, a wicked mix of old heritage buildings with colonional portugese architecture, an area with strong communist influence aswell as being lined with palm trees and seafood stalls. So I scrawled that onto my in-brain ‘must visit in India‘ list.
After our eight amazing days in Manali, we decided to switch it up and head down to South India. We had no idea of the magnitude of opposites we were about to experience just from heading to the other side of a country. It is literally like visiting a different continent, the cuisine changes, the climate, the noises and the people. We did a straight swap from pine trees, to palm and mountains, to beaches.
As well as this, the journey was epic. We left on an early evening bus journey from Manali to Chandigarh, seven hours in already, we slept in the airport for a few hours before embarking on a eight hour cross over flight from Chandigarh to Mumbai, then Mumbai to Cochin. We finally reached our accomadation in Fort Kochi, twenty six hours later. Tired is an understatement.
The weather has started to clear up around the South already, and the sun has been shining with that lovely sharp smell of salt on the wind.
We spent the last three nights here in Kochi, in our first homestay, and it has been so far the cheapest and most value accomation we have stayed in so far. At 400rs a night (£4,80)
a modern clean little double room and balcony with a home-cooked breakfast with the host every morning.
Nichoo’s guesthouse is definetly one to remember if your planning a trip to Fort Kochi.
Not being a massive fan of cities, I was a little dubious on the amount I would enjoy this place, it was always only a stop off, to link us to the rest of the South aswell as to scribble it off my mental list.
But its honestly a unique and very beautiful little area. You can sort of feel the old world underlying austerity of years past and see patches of it left through the pastel paint, peeling off the heritage town houses dotted along the shore line. You can feel the up market vibe in this segment of Cochin, smatterings of art galleries and ‘art cafes’ are nestled between luxury high end hotels, opposed on each side by the winding alleyways of normal mismatched Indian homesteads. Its got a lot of charm.
The last four days, we have meandered around art galleries, centuries old religious sites, synagogues, basiliscas, churches and museums. We have done some catch up work, boring things, laundry, accounting and I guess essentially our version of grocesseries, e.g toilet paper, mosquito reppelent and anti-bac. Before we head further South today to Allepey and then Varkala to unwind for a week or two, or three.
The Manifest Monkeys 