Since it is vacation time and many are planning trips, I thought i’ll write about my favourite holiday destination - pyara pyara cochin town! Oh what a wonderful place! You have a marine drive there which has been renovated completely. And therefore one can actually sit on those pink benches and munch on crunchy groundnuts while enjoying the beautiful sunset.
You get boat rides from there to mattancherry, fort cochin, vipin etc. And if you’ve set out for fort cochin you better take a road map along coz it is fun discovering places according to the map! But please take some water along coz they charge you double the price for mineral water! And yeah, try pulling those fishing nets along with the enthusiastic fisherfolk. It’s truly great fun. One comes across all ancestral houses built during the portugese rule ( one house has a passage that leads to inside of the other house!) here at fort kochi.
And if you’ve set out on an afternoon, please feast on proper keralite lunch with avial, olan, kalan, rice and sambar on a plantain leaf. You’ll never forget it! And try this drink called Sharjah! (banana milk shake with chocolate). I bet you’ll love it!
Another must-see place is Mattancherry where you have a very old Jewish synagogue. The floor tiles are 17 th century hand painted ones from China. The truly mesmerising synagogue reminds you of the movie - Devdas. Coz like in the movie there is a lamp ( this one’s huge!) which keeps burning 24 hours, 365 days a year. Nearby is a spice market wherefrom one can grab handful of different varieties of whole spices at reasonable rates.
And don’t be surprised if you hear them speaking Gujarati coz most businessmen there are Gujaratis. They moved to Kochi about 100 years ago and have their own community over there. You’ll get to see some really attractive antique collections there in form of jewellery and furniture.
Apart from the islands, even the city is a great place. With a chain of supermarkets named Varkey’s, Breadworld, Jayalakshmi silks on MG Road, cinema theatres, hotels and bars serving exotic sea food and innumerable jewellery stores, the city has a cosmopolitan ambience. I simply love that place. Writing any further will spoil the fun. You must go there to experience bliss!