Fort Cochin shrunk into the distance as the ferry carried us across the river to the Ernakulam quarter. Gone were the sleepy 16th century Portuguese back streets, the clouds of spices, the churches and temples.
The tickets were 5 rupees or 3 pennies for a 20 minute ride. We queued in the humidity, shirts darkening as the ticklish trickles of sweat ran down our backs. Men and women were segregated for no apparent reason as the two queues snaked through a bicycle shed, mere inches from each other. Only two tickets were available at a time and five Indian men ran the operation when one would have done. We could only rustle up a 100 rupee note to the annoyance of the ticket office and we received a fistful of 5 rupee notes in exchange, with three pink, dog eared tickets that seemed to have been printed in 1932.
The ferry passed giant smoking freighters moored at loading pontoons, cutting a swathe through the weed that clogs the channel. Indian men in small rowing boats eased across the water, moving baled goods and providing a cheaper taxi service to those who could not afford the 5 rupee fare.
The rain launched a fresh salvo as we docked and the passengers scattered to find cover. We regrouped at The Indian Coffee House. Up a dank, unlit set of concrete stairs, ICH is like Starbucks before the shop fitters arrived. Bare concrete floors, rusted chicken wire walls and octogenarian plastic garden furniture.
Coffee and biryani arrived in short order, delivered by a smiling man dressed as a 15th century Mughal soldier, compete with head fan. The rain hammered through the chicken wire as we ate. At the end, he asked for 111 rupees for three square meals and drinks. It was embarrassingly cheap and for a moment we looked at each other, wondering first, whether there had been some mistake and second, why Starbucks couldn’t do it half as well for twenty times the price.
Sated, with the rain finished for the moment, we rick-shawed to the station for the mid-morning fast bus to Allepey, the gateway to the Kerelan backwaters. The battered Tata appeared to have been hauling Indians for at least 50 years. There was no pretence at anything beyond mere functionality as the Meccano kit vehicle lurched out of the Cochin bus station. No glass in the windows; luggage piled unceremoniously around the driver’s gearstick. The bench seats were firm and definitely built for less well-nourished frames as we squeezed three to a row, bags cutting off the circulation to our legs. There were no goats and no chickens in cages but there was definitely Kerela’s equivalent of a guitar playing nun somewhere at the back.
Three hours later, with the wind having brought every conceivable sound and smell and each passing squall through the cabin, we climbed down, surprisingly refreshed from Kerela’s answer to National Express only with better views, better air conditioning and, frankly, more comfortable seats.
In south-east Asia, everyone markets their products and services pretty aggressively to the tourists, as they descend, bleary-eyed and disoriented from the bus. The same imperative operates here but in a slightly more relaxed way. The sales patter is conversational but perfectly honed to establish how much you are willing to pay. And they are insistent in a relentlessly friendly way that is hard to shake off without seeming rude.
The best defence is to find out what they are selling, and plead a prior booking, just up the road, that is fully paid for in advance. Sometimes even this doesn’t work as things are so cheap here that it is entirely plausible that you could be persuaded to forgo the fruits of your three pound investment in order to sample the delights of an alternative Nirvana. Commission influences most tourist transactions here, as does the perennial assurance that what you have already booked either doesn’t exist, or worse, is now under the management of a mad aunt trialling her new acid bath spa treatments.
Opting for the newly constructed ‘Palmy Residence’ by the main canal, we trudged across the threshold before the rain set in, admired our host’s new dental braces and dumped our bags. Dinner at Sawasthra across the canal was a never ending Thali delight presented in primary colours on a jail canteen tray. The owner refused to ignore the challenge of an empty plate, shuttling repeatedly between the tables to refill the slightest gap we managed to make in the mountains of gobi and oceans of dhal.
Happy and dry, we settled down for the night on new beds, adrift on an expanse of freshly laid marble.
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