Things to do
5-
Chinese Fishing Nets
Cantilevered timber frames with counterweight stones lift shore-operated nets out of the water along the Fort Kochi waterfront, a technique brought by Chinese traders and rare elsewhere in India. A crew of several men works each one, hauling on ropes every few minutes. Sunset draws the crowds and the photographers; low tide in early morning gives a quieter look at the mechanism.
-
Fort Kochi
Portuguese, Dutch and British rule left this peninsula at the mouth of Kochi harbour with spice godowns, a Dutch cemetery and St Francis Church, where Vasco da Gama was buried in 1524 before his remains were taken to Lisbon. Homestays and cafes occupy the old merchant houses now, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale fills the warehouses every second winter.
-
Kerala Backwaters
More than nine hundred kilometres of lagoons, canals and river mouths run behind the coast south of Kochi, fed by dozens of rivers off the Western Ghats and screened from the sea by sand bars. Converted rice barges carry overnight trips from Alappuzha and Kumarakom. Smaller punted canoes reach the narrow village canals that the big boats cannot enter.
-
Mattancherry Palace
Built by the Portuguese around 1555 as a gift to the Raja of Kochi and renamed for the Dutch who remodelled it, this low tiled building holds Kerala mural painting at its richest: rooms of Ramayana and Mahabharata scenes in vegetable pigment. Photography is barred inside. It closes on Fridays, which catches out anyone combining it with Jew Town in a single morning.
-
Paradesi Synagogue
Behind a whitewashed clock tower in Jew Town, the congregation founded in 1568 still keeps its hall of Belgian glass lamps and hand-painted Chinese floor tiles, no two alike. It is the oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth, and the community it served has almost entirely left. Visits are short, shoes come off at the door, and it closes on Saturdays and Jewish holidays.