Incredible - cochin, Kerla

Incredible trip to back water – cochin , Kerla

Its been 3 weeks already for me in Kerla now and I was already cursing myself for not visiting any places around. What the heck? I am in cochin, the queen of Arabian sea, In a state referred as “GOD’s OWN Country”
A city destined to be a perfect place for honeymoon couples, or any kind of couples but only for couple’s.
My jet airways flight landed the cochin airport and I stepped out of the airport in the lap of heaven. I passed the exit of airport and started looking around people out of curiosity, since it was my first trip out of Maharashtra state, nevertheless I thought that south is different. I paused, took a deep breath and found all black color aunties with loads of gold around there bodies to cover up themselves. I took a prepaid cab and headed for ‘Hotel Excellency’ on MG road, so far so smooth. The taxi driver stuck up in traffic and he became uneasy, moved his vehicle into the traffic causing jam and instead of listening to other’s he himself started arguing. ”something something.. rascals.. something something”. Listening through the argument I started conversation with the driver, he din replied, i uttered in English, then came the reply, I thought where is Hindi?, speaking hindi in this city is next to committing sin. The way he droved was horrible and so is the traffic of this city, My bench mark in worst trafficking was pune, but I think it should be cochin.
The taxi passed by and I was peeping outside the window for cool breeze, it was chilling winter when I left pune for cochin but alas cochin was hot like anything, its was almost 40 degrees and a sunny day, exhausting me completely.

The roads were like another small Indian town and streets full of posters, all sexy heroines with uncle age hero’s. When the series of tollywood posters ended, started the posters of jewelry brands. I concluded that if not for site seeing, cochin is famous for these two things as well. M.G Road, i.e. where my hotel is located, is the only happening place in cochin, where bar’s get closed at 10.00 PM, now that’s really a happening thing. Liquor can be bought only from government approved shops and those are only 4 in number, and so is 1 km line u need to wait until your turn comes.
Sunny day again when I decided to check out some south Indian dosa, idli.. or any other thing apart from cochin traditional food, As I don have any aag to experiments on food. I ordered 1 masala dosa, thank god that masala dosa is called Masala dosa here as sada dosa these people cant make out, yes ghee roast is what they called to sada dosa. And yes need to specify “unn” means 1, 1 masala dosa, as people have multiple dosa’s at a time. I waited for waiter to server me water, I was in bad mood due to sunny weather and wanted to clinch my thirst. Some red liquid came in transparent glass, I checked with the waiter, he said its drinking water, ignoring the colour, juz thinking that it may be some rose essence, I drank it. And immediately my face turned bad. It was hot water. Actually here everybody drinks warm water with red rose essence making the color red, but that was hot. I had to order bisleri eventually.

My Mumbai friend called up, he was staying in “tripunithuram”. I repeated the name 4 times to pronounce it properly. Apart from M.G. Road, for pronouncing all the places name, you have to practice it at least 5 times. I decided to go by bus. Buses here are full open, with a window size of 2 x 2 feet without any grills. I remembered the Best buses sophistication seeing these. I also remembered the buses shown in prabhu deva’s movies. Apart from buses the minimum auto fare here is 100 rs. Auto wala’s demand this money juz like it’s a 10 rupee note for them.
Returning back to hotel, and having such a bad experience of cochin, I dared to call up my hotel’s travel desk. I enquired about the site seeing thing, it was my cochin’s last hope to score some good points from me. He insisted, “Sir, go to back water, a boat ride through back water is incredible experience”

I booked the tickets and a cab came to took me to that place. It was 25 kms away, he picked the fellow passengers and to my surprise, all were foreigners’. With me was a 65 yr old foreigner lady from my hotel. She had a stick to support her while walking. We reached the place. A boat was lady, and again I was surprised not seeing a single India. Well since I was alone it hardly mattered. I helped the lady to climb the boat with help of the boatman.

Boatman was wearing a cap, a shirt and off course ‘lungi’. Lungi is the pride of cochin. No matter what you are driving, a boat, a bicycle, bike or bmw, all are in lungi. The boat was made up of wood, tied together by coir, (sutli) made from coconut. There were 20 neelkamal chairs kept on the boat. I grabed one chair, helping the old lady to have one. Boat started, it was tremendously slow moving. The height of back water was around 6 feet and there were two boat men controlling the boat. One was at front side and other one back. They had a long bamboo stick with them, they used to put it inside the water and push the boat. This made the boat so slow to move that time almost stopped for me. I looked down, and up and down and up and again to my watch to see the clock moving. I began to curse myself for wakening up to early in morning to catch this pathetic trip. I imagined myself diving off into water and somehow swim to make life a litle fast forward, but the boat moved, with its own sweet speed and guide explained about the various trees and shrubs and plants that grow on the back water, one of the foreigners screamed when she discovered a mango tree inside water, guide told us that it looks like mangoes but it’s a poisonous fruit. The guide was so bore, that I thought why he din ate it in place of mango. The boat moved tring, tring, tring.. slowly slowly… and I now started to hate myself. The site seeing soon turned out to be a industrial visit as guide showed us how the coconut are kept in water for six months and dried up to form the coir. A lady has a small mechanical machine to turn the cores of small pieces of fiber into coir. I was getting bored enough until I decided to have some conversation with a foreigner, She was sweet girl from Australia. To begin with her, I bought a banana chips packed sold by one of the villagers there. I told her that these banana’s are awesome in taste. She bought a packed and we being talks. I exchanged her views on different beaches in INDIA, as I knew only GOA beachs.. I ask her about how she planned the trips, her reply was that she never plans any tirp. I raised my eye brows and she looked back saying she only buys tickets. NG pays her tickets and stay of few days and later on its her own. I asked her if she had visited BALI, one of the hot favorite destination of ausies And this gave me a chance to elaborate on this topic, as I been to there before. I thought that she is the one who gonna make my day somehow until she slipped and her SLR camera fell on the ground breaking lens. I helped her and asked if that thing is working, she picked it up and said its fine. A minute later she came to me and said, no its not fine and after that she din uttered a single word to me. And I too kept mum. Our small back water trip was over and I stepped out of the boat, off course lending hand to the old age woman.
Finally I was back to hotel and had a liter of bislery to satisfy myself, concluding not to go to any other site seeing alone and not eating masala dosa for atleast a year.