The Blog of Gord

It’s about time I finished the Kochi trip… my blog topics are starting to accumulate!

By 9:30 Sunday morning (February 15), my driver Anish and I were back on the highway heading north to Cochin (aka Kochi) / Ernakulam.  As we left Alleppey, I missed what would have been a great picture: a fellow herding a flock of around a hundred fuzzy yellow chicks along the side of the road, using a stick with a plastic bag tied to the end.  I did, however, get this picture of large number of tigers sitting together beside the road.

First stop was Mattancherry Palace, built by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century for the Raja and subsequently appropriated by the Dutch.  Some interesting murals from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, a few artifacts from the Rajas, but not too exciting.  Only Rs 2 to get in, and as usual, I had to insist that a Rs 10 note was the smallest I had.  Getting change can be painful.

One street over is Jew Town, an area settled by Jews quite a long time before the Portuguese arrived in the 15th or 16th century.  The Paradesi Synogogue dates back to the 16th century, and for another Rs 2 I was able to have a look around inside before they closed their doors for the afternoon.  Photos weren’t allowed here either, but there are some good ones at this link.

 
Walking down Jew Street, I found the home of the World’s Biggest Varpu.  “Oh boy, the biggest varpu!” I thought, “…Uh, what’s a varpu?”  Not knowing what a varpu was, I thought it could be something exotic and went in for a look.  After all, I had once taken a detour a hundred kilometres out of my way to see the world’s biggest perogy in Glendon, Alberta.  Turns out a varpu is just a cooking pan, and this one wouldn’t have been big enough to fry the giant perogy.

It was a really hot day.  While I wandered around Cochin, Anish napped in the car waiting for me to come back and ask for a ride to the next place.  I eventually realized everything in Cochin is within easy walking distance, at least if you find it easy to walk in blazing 35 C sun.  Luckily, there is no shortage of places to buy a bottle of water, and it’s only Rs 26 per litre (about 65 cents).

My next stop was the oldest European church in India, St. Francis Church, from the early 16th century.  Vasco de Gama was buried there in 1524 until his body was returned to Portugal.

Santa Cruz Basilica is a much bigger church, built in the early 1900’s on the site of some older churches.  Inside it’s quite colourful; I almost expected the figures to be animatronic.

 

Finally, one of the most famous sights from Cochin, the Chinese Fishing Nets.  These are huge, cantilevered, framed nets that are lowered into the water from the shore, left for a period of time, then raised back up with whatever fish happened to be swimming over them.  It was fun watching them; each one takes several people to operate.  The resulting catch was for sale out in the sun.

  

I was all done with sight-seeing by about 2:30pm, so Anish suggested going to see some martial arts demonstrations.  What I really wanted to see was some Kathikali, a traditional Keralan dance I’d read about in a guide book.  I wasn’t too keen on the martial art demo at first, but then he showed me a brochure about it.  It turns out Kerala has a traditional martial art called kalaripayattu that is supposedly a combination of other martial arts in other parts of Asia, which according to Keralans, are all just derivations and specializations of theirs.  Maybe, but in any case, places that put on the kalaripayattu shows also have Katikali dancing.  The place I went is Greenix Village, and the show was split into two parts, an hour of kalaripayattu, then a break, then the kathikali.  There were a number of options, but I also had to juggle the fact that I had to get to the other side of Ernakulum by 9pm to catch my bus, and also leave some time for dinner.  I bought my tickets, Rs 450 for the two shows, plus Rs 25 for camera privileges.

I had about ten minutes before the kalaripayattu demo, so I wandered around their cultural museum.  It was completely empty (again, this is the off season here) except for me and two guys demonstrating traditional crafts, one operating a loom, and the other weaving bamboo, in the museum’s hot, still air.

When I went up to the kalaripayattu theatre, I found there was one other spectator.  The two of us had a ring-side seat for the next hour while one of the staff, Muthu, explained to us what was going on in the ring, going through various rituals, use of different weapons (sticks of different lengths, swords, metal flails, etc), holds, and defensive techniques.  One of the guys, who is a trainer for the Kerala police force, demonstrated a hold on each of us on our little fingers that I can tell you is quite effective; very painful.  At the end, the police instructor asked for a volunteer to try some of the weapon techniques.  The older fellow and I looked at each other.  I was game, so I gave my camera to Muthu and took my shoes off.  I avoided getting my fingers smashed, and it was a lot of fun!

 

After that I took a break for dinner.  There was a nice restaurant across the road from the cultural center, so I tried there (Anish still sleeping in the car).  Unfortunately, getting dinner at 4:30pm is not possible in Kochi (or in Bangalore, for that matter).  Dinner usually doesn’t start until 7:30pm or later.  The view was nice, though, so I asked the waiter to just bring me everything on the snack menu except the sweets:  a salad, a vegetable stew, different kinds of bread, a pot of masala chai, and a banana lassi.  While I ate, I watch the cruise ship “Tippu Sultan” (you can read about him in other blog posts) sail past.

Then, back to the theatre for the kathikali.  There was an hour of makeup application first, which wasn’t too exciting, but the performance certainly was.  I had a front row seat again (there were about 20 of us, all western tourists).  They started with a primer on the basics of kathikali, the meaning of the eye movements and the hand movements.  Then they got started on the actual dancing, which is a stylized performance of stories from the Hindu classics.  I don’t remember what the particular story was that I saw, but it was quite entertaining.  If I remember correctly, it was a god and a woman trying to convince him not to kill a bunch of people, accompanied by a man and a boy on drums while a singer chanted.  I have movies, but you’ll have to use your imagination.

The kathikali demonstration ended at 7:30pm, and it was time to get to my bus.  Anish and I figured we had plenty of time, since my bus wasn’t until 9pm and it would only take half an hour or so to get to the station over in Ernakulam.  Anish had been given orders to make sure I got on the right bus, though, and almost had a heart attack when we drove up to the KSRTC (Kerala State Road Transportation Company) bus stand and watched the Bangalore bus roar out of the station.  My ticket clearly said “21h”, so I was sure that must be another bus.  We went to the bus depot ticket window to make sure, though, and showed them my ticket.  “No, this is Kerala State Road Transportation Company buses only.  Karnataka State Road Transportation Company is over there,” he waved vaguely, and handed back my ticket.  “Over there,” we found a KSRTC office with the steel shutter rolled down for the night.  Now Anish was really concerned, thinking he’d have to chase down the bus with the car.

He walked around trying to find someone who knew something about the “other” KSRTC while I sat in the car enjoying the AC.  Luckily, I had a printout of the bus schedule with me.  There’s only one bus that leaves from Ernakulam to Bangalore, and that’s at 8pm, but it turns out there’s another from the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, to Bangalore which happens to pass through Ernakulam on the way, at 9pm.  Anish relaxed a little at that point, and we waited.  Sure enough, the bus showed up at about 8:50, collected the ten of us who were waiting there in the dark, and we were on the road by 8:55.

The bus was nice, a big air-conditioned Volvo with reclining seats and an attendant to hand out water bottles, blankets (this was an overnight trip), and garbage bags. The only thing this bus is missing, and bear in mind it’s an overnight ten-hour non-stop express, is a washroom!  Well, it turns out it’s not entirely non-stop.  About an hour out of Ernakulam, the bus stopped at a roadside restaurant where everyone got off, had a bio break, bought snacks, etc.  You just have to make sure you don’t miss the bus, and get back on the right bus.  I assume there must have been other stops, but I didn’t notice them.  I put in my earplugs, reclined my seat, snuggled under the blanket (the driver had the AC at 22 C; it was still in the 30’s outside), and slept until 6:30am when we were well-inside Bangalore.

 

We arrived at the bus depot about 20 minutes late.  My next task was to find the company driver, Saif, who was waiting for me.  The bus had stopped in the middle of the parking lot, surrounded by other buses parked haphazardly everywhere.  I asked someone where the exit was.  That way.  I asked another person.  The opposite direction.  A third person pointed in the perpendicular direction.  Good thing I had a mobile phone, because I was able to call Saif and find out where he was.  We ended up meeting at the train station, a ten-minute walk away, where the whole journey had started three days earlier.

Back at the hotel I had a shower and breakfast, and I was in the office by 9:30, as usual.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.