Ah ha, it's little old me again, back to wow you with tales of our swashbuckling (what ever that means...) journey through India. We last left you in Mysore, where I was recovering from a mild case of 'breakfast loss.' We ended up staying for nearly a week in Mysore, which is quite a pleasant town, not least because it's got a Pizza joint. Most of you will know that I am quite keen on Indian food, particularly after a few lagers, but after 4 weeks of dosa and thalis ... Oh my God, it was good. We had lunch there 3 days out of 5 ...

The city is an historical centre and very picturesque, has a wonderful market and palaces and such, which were all as nought next to 'Pizza Corner.' Our hotel was a lovely place called 'The Ritz' which, whilst it certainly wasn't up to the images that one brings to mind when one considers 'The Ritz' and all it stands for (pretentiousness, incredulous wealth and those little dresses in which rich girls used to dance the Charleston - not all bad then...) but was well worth the 5 pound a night. Anyone coming through this town would enjoy a stay here, although the fact that they only have 4 rooms means that they're often full (we had to stay a night in an inferior hotel whilst waiting for a room to become available... oh God, it's just intolerable, darling)

We were lucky enough to have turned up on Sunday, which is the one day each week when the Mysore palace is a) free to get in and b) lit up like a Christmas tree. The lit palace is the image that you will see on all advertising literature for the state and with good reason; it's quite stunning.

We took the organised tour of the city, which takes all day and covers all the major sites of Mysore, including a return trip to the palace. Fortunately the zoo was shut on the day we took the tour, so we went to the natural history museum instead. Visiting zoos in developing countries can often require a very strong stomach that, as you will have gathered, I was not in full possession of during this week.

We had intended to take an overnight bus to Cochin, in Kerala but had found that the bus was either full (indefinitely) or not running (for the foreseeable future) or something in-between (for an unspecified time), we were unable to get anything resembling a straight response. In the end, we booked ourselves to the nearest convenient spot, Kozhikode (don't ask me how to pronounce it; I don't know) from where we could catch the train the final leg to Cochin (now called Kochi, it would appear to be the only city in India which has had its name changed to a SHORTER one.)

We weren't really too happy about the prospect of an overnight bus ride, bus rides during the day are quite hairy enough thank you, so you can imagine our delight when it began raining an hour before our bus was due to arrive, which made the bus late, and then continued to rain the whole night while our driver, undaunted by the appalling weather, tried desperately to catch up the hour that he had lost coming from Bangalore to Mysore ... and almost managed to. On arrival in Kozhikode we found that we were, in fact, still alive and so got the coast train South to Ernakulam, which is the mainland section of Kochi.

Kochi is a port town, with considerable historical significance but, like Hampi before it, this is all very uninteresting if you can't get a beer to help you soak up the atmosphere. Now, alcohol is not COMPLETELY unavailable in Kochin, you can stay on the mainland (Ernakulam), which has pubs and restaurants with beer licences etc but this area is not too pretty and smells so you wouldn't want to stay for too long. The place to be, I think, is Fort Cochin, which is the outermost island in the estuary and has all the cool old buildings and stuff. Beer was a bit of a problem, though but the XL hotel serves it (are you listening, Phil?), which just means that you have to put up with their uninspiring food and plain decor for the sake of alcohol ... sounds like a deal to me. The BTG (Beardy Traveller's Guide, couldn't be bothered with the longer version any more) actually recommends staying on the mainland to preserve the 'environmental heritage' of the fort area so, of course, everyone stays in the fort. Well, you would, wouldn't you, if someone had told you not to. I also happen to believe that their sentiment is a complete load of hogwash as, especially in poorer nations, areas will only attract the investment required for maintenance and renovation if they are able to make the money to finance it. That is to say that they almost certainly won't get any outside money at all and must make it locally, in order to justify their existence. This may not be preferable, but is a reality. No-one charges anyone for walking around the Fort area (I say Fort AREA because we couldn't actually find the FORT, it seems to be a complete ruin...) so the only way that this area is going to attract renovation investment is as a business, be-it cafés, hotels, shops etc. Just have a look at Prague if you want to see what I'm talking about ... Anyhoo, the area of Fort Cochin is being renovated and up kept (in degrees) and there are now some very nice hotels there (although some are stratospheric in their pricing) and one café that actually makes proper espresso! The fort area is also PERFECT for this sort of thing. It's a small town almost entirely period homes, mostly in fixable condition. It has charm, it's cheap and it lacks the madness of the mainland (considerably less traffic.) I liked it (even if the beer was thin on the ground.) I would point out also, that the vast majority of these businesses seem to be small and locally owned, adding to the local benefit.

We ended up staying in the fort area for 4 days relaxing, renting bikes to ride over to the mainland and around the for area (a scandalous 60 pence a day...) and took a backwater village tour to see how the locals make rope from coconut shells. This actually answered a longstanding question of mine, which was; 'why the hell does everyone throw their old coconut husks away on the roof of their houses? Surely a bin would be more appropriate?' There you go, mystery solved; They dry the husks out (the soft fibrous bit outside the shell) for a couple of months, then beat the shit out of it with stones to break it up a bit, before bundling it up and soaking it in the river for another 3 months (I imagine that all the sewage in the river probably bleaches it, or something) before giving it a final dry and then spinning it into rope (called coir) using an ingenious contraption made out of a couple of bike wheels and a whole bunch of rubber bands. Fascinating, but why they didn't just go down the local climbing shop and BUY some rope is beyond me...

Next time, a trip down the river and rumours of a typhoon...

Till then

Cheers

James