Gorilla Monsoon

Fort Cochin (Kochi) Kerala, India

 

So Kerala is nice but hell if it isn't wet.  I mean it's the monsoon-end season but hell. Kochi/Cochin is one of the more interesting spots in all of India, it's on the bay at the northern head of the famous Kerala backwaters, where I'm headed in a few days, and has been a European (Dutch, British, Portuguese) settlement for hundreds of years (pre-Raj) as well as a center of Christianity (Sts. Thomas A. (allegedly) and Francis X (definitely) landed here a long, long time ago.  Adding to the western feel  is the formerly large, now almost vanished, Jewish community (mostly in a mattancherry neighborhood, tastefully named "jew town") that dates back to either Nebuchdenezzar or the diaspora or medieval times, depending on who you believe.  It's probably best known in the contemporary times as the setting for about half of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, which, if you have not read yet, you should - I'm ashamed for taking 30 years to discover Salman Rushdie, it's not like he was never in the news... 

 

Kochi was the main spice trading port for a long time, and still is south India's largest shipping center, as its close to the Spice Mountains/Western Ghats from whence I just came.  Regarding the Spice Mountains, I think when I left you last I was about to engage in a night safari.  That term was a bit of a euphemism, it was actually just a few hours of walking with the Periyar Park Rangers on their nightly patrol of the park in search of poachers and smugglers.  Apparently elephant poaching & sandalwood smuggling is a big concern, though it has declined a bit since the death of the infamous Veerapan  the Bandit King of Tamil Nadu & the Western Ghats. (India is many things but seldom without local color, I mean who the hell knew that Bandit Kings still existed?)

 

Anyway, one of my two ranger escorts carried a rifle, which I imagine was for smugglers and not tigers.  If it was for the latter, it goes without saying I did not like his chances of hitting a charging tiger in the rain, at night -- I mean I probably had a better chance with my swiss army knife (who at this point I have creatively named "Knifey" due to lack of having any other friends here in a Taxi Driveresque move).

 

 The night patrol by itself was about as much fun as walking around a jungle in a monsoon at midnight as you would imagine --  were you imagining leeches? Because if not, the picture would be incomplete.  Yeah, there were a lot of leeches.  Prior to a few days ago, I was grotesquely indifferent yet somewhat intrigued with leeches in principle, having no experience with them.  I can honestly say that the thrill is gone.  Leeches are really, really, really gross and annoying.

 

The ride back down to Kochi the next day was a fiasco too.  As I had crossed the border, I was on a Kerala bus and not the usual Tamil Nadu State DVD Coach - which invariably features blaring movies of Tamil flicks, usually featuring a chubby, lungie wearing (lungie is like a kilt/skirt for men) sideburned  mustachioed guy performing badly choreographed dance-fighting moves to Tamil music in between love songs. (As I mentioned earlier, this one guy, one of MGR's successors,  is now one of the state governors whose visage is plastered everywhere. )  The bus station in Kottayam, as I tried to head south, was a nightmare.   The tourist police/station masters tried to help me and had me on about seven or eight different buses simultaneously but none of them went to my initial intended destination (Kollom) so I ended up taking the law into my own hands and heading for Kochi.  A lot of times asking for help an India is a bitch because nobody's really in charge, it's often easier just to go to the bus drivers/etc and call out the name of your destination/problem loudly in English until somebody helps you.