Sunday – Fort Cochin

Sunday 13/11/05 – Fort Cochin, India
After the long flight, the pause in Columbo, finally Cochin - a group of islands that cling to India’s south-western coast opposite the Ernakulum, the urban centre that serves as Kerala’s capital. A taxi meets us, thank Vishnu, as tiredness hits in waves that render us dumb.

To the cold Colonial house called Malabar in sleepy Fort Cochin, overlooking the scubby paradeground where packs of gentle dogs roam while sacred cows yawn and chew.

We are shown to our room – our beautiful, square, whitewashed room with its cool floors and four-poster bed – where we crumble. Here, it is lunchtime; in my head it’s 7am and I haven’t slept. But now she takes me, and my fitful wakenings are greeted by the ceaseless thrumming of the late monsoon rains, a wonderous Indian lullaby.

When we awake again it is dark, and the rains have slowed to the occasional thick plop. We eat at the Malabar’s opulent restaurant, overlooking the courtyard with its plunge pool and cackle of crows, then take a walk, stopping to for a drink at the even granded Brunton Boathouse. It’s the only place on the Cochin peninsular that serves G&T. But here we fall victim to a talker, an Indian waiter who wont let up about the cheapness of his brother’s taxi, the rate he charges per kilometre, the extortionate prices of his rivals… this is banter to rise to, but I have no energy to rise and I sends me plummeting back into violent tiredness: and so back, back and sleep, sleep.

Next: Monday in Cochin