Cochin Trip (Kerala) 6/18-6/20

Rohini's parents' backyard, overlooking the river

Lounging on the houseboat...

This houseboat is much bigger than the one just the two of us took. They have such cool architecture!

Rohini driving the houseboat!

The houseboat we traveled the backwaters with is in the background

Coconut water, straight from the coconut. Not my favorite, but I had to at least try it!

With some flowers at the Gateway Hotel

This weekend I took a trip to Cochin (also called Kochi). It’s barely a 1.5 hour flight south of Bangalore, and on the west coast. Kochi is in the state of Kerala. I waited at the wrong bus stop for half an hour before moving to the correct bus stop, where I waited an additional hour for the number 7 bus to come. This is the only one that goes to the airport without having to switch buses. It’s nice too, and air conditioned. The flight was on time and Rohini was there to greet me in the airport when I arrived. Rohini is a classmate from USF who is also doing her MPH. She is interning with an insurance company in Cochin and she is from Thodupuzha, about an hour away. Saturday after I arrived we went to lunch at the Grand Hotel then did some window-shopping in Fort Cochin. We saw Jew Town, but the famous 400-year old synagogue was closed. We also went into the Dutch Palace, a famous spot in Cochin with a museum of old artifacts. Afterwards we had coffee and went to a spectacular 4 story sari shop where brides go to buy their bridal saris. Such a cool experience—you sit down in chairs and the women who work there bring you different saris and you tell them what you like and don’t like. They have thousands and thousands. They bring you coffee or tea if you want it…kind of like they bring you drinks at the bridal shops at home. Next we stopped at a gold jewelry store, just to look. That night we went to dinner at the spectacular Gateway Hotel (looked like we were in NYC or something) and returned to Rohini’s very nice furnished, air-conditioned apartment.

Sunday we headed south near Allepy to Kumarakom to take a houseboat tour on the Kerala backwaters. It’s so beautiful there. Really makes you forget the crazy city that is Bangalore. After lunch at a resort we spent 3 hours on the boat, just relaxing, learning about the surroundings, and enjoying coconut water (straight out of the coconut) and a huge meal at the end of the trip. There was fresh cooked fish, omelets, chapatti, pineapple, some kind of curry, and appam (unleavened bread popular in Kerala; you use toddy to make it). We had one of the staff on the boat go out and get us toddy, or this drink you get from the coconut tree. I’ll have to research this more because I didn’t quite understand the process when Rohini was explaining it to me. Anyway, toddy reminds me a bit of yeast. It smells a little like yeast and if you keep it in a water bottle with the top on tight, after ‘some time’ when you untwist the bottle, a ton of air escapes. Strange, right? Have to keep the bottle top on very loosely or else it might explode. The backwaters were soo beautiful… the pictures don’t do it justice! It’s the rainy season right now in Kerala and Rohini told me it’s been pouring all day for weeks. For some reason though, the whole weekend was perfect- all sun and no rain. It did rain a bit Monday though, but the rain is so pretty to look at and we had no plans, so it didn’t ruin anything.

After the backwaters we went to Rohini’s parents’ house in Thodupuzha. They have a beautiful house where Rohini and her two brothers grew up. Her mom fed me, of course, (so nice, but I wasn’t the least bit hungry after all the food on the boat!) and I went to bed early. It was so great to meet Rohini’s two little girls! They’re 4 and 5, and very cute. I can’t explain how hospitable everyone here is. Rohini and her family took such amazing care of me! It really makes you think about how many wonderful people there are in the world. On Monday Rohini’s mother drove us around town and showed us some of the sights including this very old foot bridge that crosses over the river that backs to their house. It’s very rickety and shaky…kind of scary if more than one person is walking on it and it’s bouncing all around. We also saw the rubber trees and I learned that they are one of the main things grown there. I got a little lesson in how the rubber is harvested from the trees. The trees aren’t ready to be tapped until they are about 7 years old and they have to be drained of the milk every day. Afterwards, we stopped at Rohini’s grandmother’s cousins house, where we were fed payasum (vermicelli noodles in milk with sugar and raisins..so good!). Next, we went to her grandmother’s house and had fresh passion fruit juice, fresh pineapple, beef cutlets and fish cutlets. As if that wasn’t enough, Rohini’s mother fed us chicken biryani, mango, and cake for lunch! I can’t eat for three days. Everything was so good though and it was neat to get some Keralan food as it’s a little bit different than Bangalorean food.

I got back to Bangalore Monday evening and worked on my special project all evening. My short work week will start Tuesday! This coming Friday night, Vanita, Corinne, Marissa and I leave for a weekend trip to Munnar, which is also in Kerala. I think I plan on staying the following weekend in Bangalore and spending the last in Pondicherry (east coast former French colony). These last three weeks in India will be so short!