A to B - Coonoor to Cochin:
'Sit on the floor' bus journey, accross the plains to Coimbatore. Just accross of the station, we enjoyed fast-food Indian style: the Thali with never ending refills, slapped on banana leaves. Afterwards, we joined a train full of pilgrims for the final 4 hour trundle into Cochin.

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The pilgrims were en route to an annual festival in Kerala. They had bare chests and feet, wore long black skirts and carried their offerings in a neatly tied bundle on their heads. At sunset, they stood up and filled the corridors, constructing makeshift shrines using dishes of burning oil and incense. The carriage filled with sweet smoke and feverish chanting led by a rousing cheerleader. This all-male choir sang, clapped and stamped like happy football supporters. Their laudation unaffected, wherever they may be.

It raised goose pimples.

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A natural port, Cochin has long being attractive as a safe retreat from the powerful cape currents. Waves of invading westerners settled here over the centuries, the Dutch, Portuguese, French and English each leaving their impression on the attitude, culture and buildings of the current people.

Each headland has its own identity; one of the islands hosted an Indo-Portuguese community tracing its ancestry back to the days of Vasco de Gama. Befriended by a resident, a well-spoken merchant sailor, we were welcomed into one of these period houses whose cool rooms continue to protect against this very unwestern weather. It did not however protect us from his selection of loudly distorted American country music!

In the Jewish quarter, antique shops harbour warehouses crammed with pillaged religious artefacts, ageless craftsmanship sold for profit to the modern invaders.

Inland and South of the city stretched a maze of canals and expansive lakes called the Backwaters. A palm lined boulevards plied by taxi-boats dropping off the local workers in their isolated paddy fields.

A lush paradisiac land.