As previously mentioned the Holiday Inn Kochi has an excellent restaurant, in our opinion every bit as good as the five-star Raj Bengal in Kolkata which we think was our best hotel overall.
Anyway they have several live cooking stations and at breakfast one just does waffles and pancakes, so I decide for my last breakfast here to have pancakes and they are fabulous.
We drive into the old town of Cochin, which was originally settled by the Portuguese in the mid 1500s.
We pass a church then stop at Mattancherry Palace, built around 1555. A century later the Dutch renovated it to its present state and the Maharajas of the region lived here until well after Partition.
The most striking aspect of the palace is the 300m2 of original murals which adorn many of the walls. Amongst all this is volumes of historical information, one I particularly like shows how the sea level changes created the Vembanad lake and the backwaters.
Numerous palanquins are displayed, enclosed ones for the royal ladies and an open one for the Maharaja. We’re told how in one mural the stages of Darwinism are carefully and clearly documented, despite the fact they pre-date the birth of Charles.
Across from the palace is the oldest synagogue in the commonwealth, which was built here in 1568 under the protection of the Maharaja. The area is unapologetically called Jew Town but we might more respectfully call it the Jewish Quarter these days. It’s basically full of antiques and shops, although we peek at an hotel built in the old ginger warehouse as we pass.
The pepper and spice exchange is here and remains the “Wall St” of all spices.
We pass many gorgeous old Portuguese style houses, the larger ones now hotels, the smaller ones mostly shops, including Sarah Cohen’s which is apparently quite famous. We meet her adopted son briefly since Jishoy knows him.
The synagogue and cemetery are out of bounds without pre-planning so we cannot visit.
Just around the corner is the India Army base which is still on the fortifications built by the Portuguese, and beyond that a tiny beach and the heads where those Chinese nets were sited yesterday.
We watch as they raise and lower, each time catching some fish, or not, but over the space of a day enough, even after the birds have had their share.
We finish with the St Francis CSI Church, where Vasco de Gama was initially entombed, although no longer – his relatives insisted he was repatriated.
After a fascinating morning we return for lunch and Spanish, then get dropped off at the fifth largest shopping mall in India. Lu Lu is enormous on five floors, and seven times larger than Westfield in London which is the UK’s largest. We wander round for a while before walking the 5km back home in time for ice cream and then a dip in our pool.
