Fort Cochin

I just spent the last three days in Fort Cochin, Kerala. Fort Cochin is this wonderful little peninsular town on the coast of Kerala. Other larger towns surround it but Fort Cochin has retained a wonderful European feel from the Portuguese and Dutch traders that lived there. It was so bizarre to be walking through an Indian town that felt more like what I imagine Lisbon to look like. Buildings have pastel like colors, red or wood tiled roofs, and walls that are slowly peeling. Kids would play cricket in front of my hotel in a field near a falling-down old Portuguese church. There are these Chinese fishing nets on the beach that have so much character and at sunset you see people casting their nets into the ocean in knee-deep water.

The town is fairly touristy for India but slow moving. I mainly just walked around, got coffee at little cafes, thought, and read. It was nice to think and figure some things out. I also found a bookstore with W. Sommerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, one of my favorite books of all time, and have been reading it. It is a perfect book for this lazy trip and encountering the characters again is like running into old friends so it is really comforting.

The trip so far has been wonderfully relaxing but I think I am ready to get back to Delhi. I miss working at the school and Marang. I miss the good north Indian food. I miss all those kinds of things. Delhi, it seems, has really started to become like home.

I am in Goa right now and today we’ll leave for north Goa and then Mumbai (something I am particularly excited about… I hear rumors of real Mexican food) then it is back to Delhi. What a trip!