Backwaters Part 2 - Fort Cochin

Our next stop after staying overnight on the house boat in Allepey was Fort Cochin or Kochi as it's now known.  A brief aside about Indian city names:  For years the standard was to use the names the British (or other colonial powers, just about everyone has a taste of India at one time or another) gave cities when referring to them in English.  Recently there's been a push to revert to the spelling of how they're referred to in the language of that state, hence Bombay has become Mumbai and Calcutta is now Kolkata.  Generally speaking though both names still get used and they aren't too far apart phonetically.  There are exceptions though and the British conventions make a lot of sense when you try to read out names like Udhagamandalam (British: Ooty) or Thiruvananthapuram (British: Trivandrum).  I'm not saying I'm against removing the colonial names, I'm just saying I can't pronounce the real names for $#!%.

Anyways, back to my travels.  The history of Fort Cochin goes something like this.  The area has been the location of various bustling ports on the southwestern coast of India that have been exporting spices for hundreds of years.  Along came the Portuguese to secure some lucrative trading rights and set up shop.  Then the Dutch came along a few decades later and decided they wanted a piece of the pie, so they happily kicked the Portuguese to the curb and got their trade on.  Finally the star of the British Empire was rising and they decided they didn't want any wooden-shoe wearing, tulip sniffing Dutchmen around making money that was rightfully the Queen's.  The odd thing is that, in this jumble of history and colonial clashes, Fort Cochin was able to absorb all the influences and actually keep an amazing feel about it.

There were a few big churches around, apparently Kerala has the highest percentage of Christians in all of India.  The historical highlight was definitely Jew Town though.  And no, I'm not making that up.  It really is called Jew Town.

The narrow alleys of most of it are actually pretty deserted, just quiet people strolling along and a few shops.  Goats actually do outnumber rickshaws in this area (Lonely Planet was right!).  Towards the 500 year old synagogue things start to get a bit more touristy though, with plenty of shops and lots of touts. I actually had
my favorite encounter with a tout here when walking past his shop.

Salesman:  You, come into my shop.  Good price.

Me:  No thanks.

Salesman:  Come, come in.  Looking is free.

Me: *ignore him*

Salesman:  Special price for you.  Come and look.

Me:  *keep walking*

Salesman:  *to our backs*  Special price because you're special!

Me: *thinking* I am special, thanks for noticing.

The synagogue wasn't fantastic to look at, and sadly photos aren't allowed of the insides.  The history of it is fascinating though.  Jews came from Europe originally to trade in this area and other parts of colonial India and constructed it in 1568.  Yet facing persecution in Europe at various times, many Jews came to India to escape nasty things like the Inquisition or forced conversions.  It always amazes me when looking at the interconnectedness of human history and how deeply intertwined communities all over the world have been.

After an initial day of historical sightseeing, Jess and I decided to get out of the city and see some more of the stuff Kerala is known for.  And that meant more backwaters!  Initially we were worried we'd get bored because it'd be too similiar to our other houseboat trip but we were pleasantly surprised and had a great time.  Rather than a private boat, this was a guided tour that started early in the morning and ended around 5.  We first drove out to a town outside Cochin and met a few other tourists on the way.  They were all pleasant and I think everyone's stories of travelling India for one or two months got Jess jealous that she couldn't take a long vacation just to travel.

The first sights we saw on the houseboat portion were scenes of early morning life on the lakes.  Tons of fishermen were out, many using various methods to catch a kind of freshwater mussel that lives there.  Some people were using long poles while others were out of their boats and somehow using their feet to dredge them up.  Speaking of crazy interconnectness, another popular fishing method in and around Cochin is the use of Chinese fishing nets that operate according to the tides (or something, I really don't know how the hell they work) and are a relic from a trade mission sent by Kubla Khan in 1400 AD.

Apparently another big industry here is for divers to go down and dig up sand from the bottom of these lakes that's then used in construction.  We learned on our first backwater excursion that some of the smaller landmasses are man made and that whole areas of the backwaters and adjacent land have been converted into rice fields which require a lot of water.

After that we stopped off on an islands to take a look at a small spice garden and some local industry.  Coconut palms grow EVERYWHERE in Kerala.  Even the capital Trivandrum was covered in them, we were actually amazed when we didn't see them everywhere once we headed into the mountains.  So taking coconuts from the trees is one use for them, but another is the manufacture of toddy, a kind of palm sap gathered by chopping off the tip of the flower bud and letting it drain.

This guy was a local toddy tapper.  His job is to shimmy up to the top of the palms, cut the tip of the flower stem and then set up a collection vessel.  I believe they said they come to collect the sap every morning and evening.  Each stem only produces about 100 to 300 milliliters so to make it worth their while it means climbing a lot of trees.  The juice itself is supposed to be a very healthy drink and is recommended to pregnant women because of probiotic bacteria in it or something like that.  But where's the fun in that?  The real action comes when they leave it sitting for awhile to ferment so you get a nice 3 or 4 percent alcoholic beverage.  We sampled some along with the river mussels (I had my misgivings but the mussels were absolutely delicious stir-fried up with lots of ginger and spices).  The toddy itself is very sweet but the alcoholic kind was pretty decent.  It was pretty funny that all the Indians in our tour group specified strictly non-alcoholic toddy while the foreigners were insistent they wanted only alcoholic and wanted to know exactly how alcoholic it was going to be.   Clash of cultures I suppose.

After a good Kerala thali lunch they loaded us into smaller boats pushed along by a guy with a pole.  We went through a series of narrow, man-made canals that were great for bird-watching and seeing the villages up close.

Our next tourist stop was to watch an old women using a contraption made from a bicycle wheel to spin coir, fiber taken from the husk of a coconut, into a kind of rope.  The process was interesting, I never thought that coconut palms could be such a useful plant.

At our last stop for afternoon tea some kids were coming back from school and Jess made some new friends.  Indians are really nice people when it isn't their job to get some money out of you.  And I suppose I can't complain about all the Indian tourists wanting a picture of me when I go ahead and take some pictures of them.  I just wish they'd ask first instead of sneaking out their cell phones and snapping a few quick ones like I'm some sort of wild animal.

So that's pretty much all there was to our trip to Cochin.  It was one of the nicer places we traveled, with a really good traveler infrastructure set up and a surprisingly pleasant city area to wander around.  You could actually walk 100 meters without hearing a car horn blasting somewhere in the distance.  Sadly I just realized that as I write this in my hotel room all I can hear is my ceiling fan and dozens of horns blaring outside my window.  C'est la vie.