Kochi day 3

Oh, we are having a good time. There’s far too much to take in. Much of it is either unbelievably filthy or unbelievably brightly coloured. The smell of raw sewage on one hand and the scents of the spice markets on the other. Handsome faces vs fungus-mottled limb stumps. Crikey Moses.

Yesterday we took the ferry from Ernakulam to Fort Kochi. We walked around for as long as we could, then hired an auto-rickshaw to show us around some more—after an hour and a half of that we had to stop and recover, and eat, so we sat in the Hotel Seagull and drank Kingfisher beer and ate Kerala rice and curries and watched dolphins and dredges and fishing boats and cable-layers and tour boats float by outside.

Today will be a quieter day. We’ve some Internetting to do, and some Pilates (you have to bend quite well in the middle to get in and out of these auto-rickshaws) and some work (tweaking the Shimmaron novel). And before it gets too hot (or after, this evening) we will go out for another wander around Ernakulam.