Day 20

I rolled out of bed after a peaceful, dream-filled sleep as the sun was coming up and the "commuter" ferries began running again along the backwaters. As the motor started up and we headed out again, our breakfast appeared. A couple more hours of moving quietly through the backwaters, and sadly it was time to return to land.

We caught a taxi out of town and headed back up north to Kochi, specifically the Fort Cochin area. We had booked another family-run guesthouse, and as we rolled up, the host recognized us, opened the nearest door, and we were in our room.

We took a walk out to the water, where I got my feet wet in the Indian Ocean. After that I promptly stepped in some crap, but luckily I had put my sandals back on by then. We watched the men working the Chinese fishing nets, which are huge wooden contraptions counterbalanced with small boulders. About six men work each net, lowering it down into the water, and then hauling it back up to see what they have caught. For some reason I was expecting each haul to produce a giant pile of fish, but it seems like they're lucky to get one or two. Which explains why they work the nets all day long.

We did some more walking around the town, checking out some churches (Kerala has a large Christian population) and a bunch of antique/importer/exporter shops displaying all sorts of furniture/art/weird junk. They were the kind of places where a husband would find and fall in love with some enormous sculpture that his wife would absolutely hate. Back in the center of town we did some Internetting, which was made easy by the fact that there was a place with Internet access everywhere you looked. That was the first clue that Fort Cochin was one of the most tourist-filled areas we'd been in, with the other clue being the homestay guesthouses everywhere you looked. Oh, and the white people everywhere you looked, though usually the "Lonely Planet" sort as opposed to the tour bus sort.

For dinner, we went to a place right around the corner from our room called Malabar House. It was recommended in the "Top End" section of the Lonely Planet, and we got a personal recommendation saying that although it was really expensive and "a bit pretentious", the food was excellent. We figured we might as well blow it out for our last night out on our own in India, and plus, they had a liquor license, which is apparently a bit rare in Kerala. I was curious what the "pretentious" part might mean, and we found that out immediately. As we walked into the nearly empty courtyard, we were first asked if we had a reservation (the first time I'd even heard of such a concept in India). When we revealed that we did not, we were asked to please take a seat out front for five mintues while they tried to find us a table. Five minutes later (probably after the host got out of the toilet), we were granted a table right next to the stage where the live music would be playing, with the apology that this was the only table that was available. Uh huh, sure. Anyway, it gave us a close-up view of the sitar and tabla duo that came out later, and they were good too. And the food was truly excellent. I had a starter of fish mousse, a main course of tiger prawns with chili and garlic, and a dessert of chocolate samosas in a chocolate and mango sauce. Mmmmm. And while it was ridiculously expensive for Indian standards, it would still be considered quite a bargain by American (and especially European) standards. Such a cost differential really helps make splurging in India a guilt-free endeavor.