Cochin & Surrounds

The venerable city of KOCHI (long known as Cochin) is Kerala’s prime tourist destination, spreading across islands and promontories between the Arabian Sea and the backwaters. Its main sections – modern Ernakulam and the old peninsular districts of Mattancherry and Fort Cochin to the west – are linked by bridges and a complex system of ferries. Although some visitors opt to stay in the more convenient Ernakulam, the overwhelming majority base themselves in Fort Cochin, where the city’s complex history is reflected in an assortment of architectural styles. Spice markets, Chinese fishing nets, a synagogue, a Portuguese palace, India’s first European church and seventeenth-century Dutch homes can all be found within an easy walk. Kochi is also one of the few places in the state where you are guaranteed kathakali performances, both in authentic and abridged tourist versions.

Kochi sprang into being in 1341, when a flood created a safe natural port that swiftly replaced Muziris (now Kodungallur, 50km north) as the chief harbour on the Malabar Coast. The royal family moved here from Muziris in 1405, after which the city grew rapidly, attracting Christian, Arab and Jewish settlers from the Middle East. The history of European involvement from the early 1500s onwards is dominated by the aggression of the Portuguese, Dutch and British, who successively competed to control the port and its lucrative spice trade. From 1812 until Independence in 1947 it was administered by a succession of diwans, or finance ministers. In the 1920s, the British expanded the port to accommodate modern ocean-going ships, and Willingdon Island, between Ernakulam and Fort Cochin, was created by extensive dredging

Fort Cochin, the grid of venerable old streets at the northwest tip of the peninsula, is where the Portuguese erected their first walled citadel, Fort Immanuel. Only a few fragments of the former battlements remain, crumbling into the sea beside Cochin’s iconic Chinese fishing nets. But dozens of other evocative Lusitanian, Dutch and British monuments survive.

A good way to get to grips with Fort Cochin’s many-layered history is to pick up the free walking-tour maps produced by Kerala Tourism and the privately run Tourist Desk. They lead you around some of the district’s more significant landmarks, including the early eighteenth-century Dutch Cemetery, Vasco da Gama’s supposed house and several traders’ residences.

Some 76km southeast of Kochi and 37km northeast of Alappuzha, KOTTAYAM is a compact, busy Keralan town strategically located between the backwaters and the mountains of the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. For Keralans, it’s synonymous with money, both old and new. The many rubber plantations around it, introduced by British missionaries in the 1820s, have for more than a century formed the bedrock of a booming local economy, most of it controlled by landed Syrian Christians.

The presence of two thirteenth-century churches on a hill 5km northwest of the centre (accessible by auto-rickshaw) attests to the area’s deeply rooted Christian heritage. Two eighth-century Nestorian stone crosses with Palavi and Syriac inscriptions, on either side of the elaborately decorated altar of the Valliapalli (“big”) church, are among the earliest solid traces of Christianity in India. The visitors’ book contains entries from as far back as the 1890s, including one by the Ethiopian king, Haile Selassie, and a British viceroy. The apse of the nearby Cheriapalli (“small”) church is covered with lively paintings, thought to have been executed by a Portuguese artist in the sixteenth century. If the doors are locked, ask for the key at the church office.

A twenty-minute bus ride west of Kottayam brings you to the shores of Vembanad Lake, where the Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary, spread over a cluster of islands in the lagoon, forms the focus of a line of ultra-luxurious resorts on the water’s edge. Between November and March, the wealthy metropolitan Indian tourists who holiday here are joined by flocks of migratory birds, though not in large enough numbers to entice non-specialists. Birds, or representations of them, also feature prominently in the area’s most bizarre visitor attraction, the Bay Island Driftwood Museum, just off the main road on the outskirts of Kumarakom village, in which lumps of driftwood collected by a former school-teacher are exhibited in an idiosyncratic gallery.

Another possible day-trip from Kottayam is the magnificent Mahadeva (Shiva) temple at ETTUMANUR, 12km north on the road to Ernakulam, whose entrance porch holds some of Kerala’s most celebrated medieval wall paintings. The most spectacular depicts Nataraja (Shiva) executing a cosmic tandava dance, trampling evil in the form of a demon underfoot. Foreigners can enter the temple for free, but you’ll need to buy a camera ticket  from the counter on the left of the main gateway.

Note : from the 'Rough Guide' directory www.roughguides.com