Food!
- Sep 2, 2016
- 2 min read
Finally heading down to the south of India, the book promises the south to be a completely different country! Much more laid back with better food and infrastructure built for Western tourists. To get there we would get a train to Kolkatta (Calcutta) then take two planes to get to Cochin.
Our overnight train to Kolkatta was scheduled for 11:30pm, we arrived at the station around 11pm and, to our horror, saw it was delayed until 3:20am. We endured the wait, nearly getting on the wrong train, until the right train showed up at 5am *sob* and slept until we arrived in Kolkatta about 1pm.
Honestly we’d been dreading the idea of Kolkatta, famously a horrible place where Mother Theresa lived, full of poverty and misery. Turns out it’s bloody lovely. Who knew!
Our hotel was amazing and the food was so gorgeous. I ordered these little veg pies and ate them all so quickly I forgot to take a picture… After eating the same grey food for weeks this was very exciting!
Our flights went smoothly, we went with Spice Jet who are an Indian mix of Easy Jet and Virgin, when the plane lands they serenade you with a bit of Ronan Keating, Bryan Adams, and of course Elton John.
More lovely food! At an airport!
Cochin itself was pretty nice. It was a relief to see the sea and walk on the beach, the highlight was definitely this meal of grilled fresh fish and coconut rice:
Do I sound a little food obsessed? I am.
They catch the fish using these Chinese fishing nets which apparently came to India 400 B.C.
We wandered around the Dutch “Palace” (house) which had lots of murals of Indian Gods painted on the walls, but they didn’t let you take pictures for fear of the flash further fading the artwork. The south has a heavy Portuguese influence and as such there are churches everywhere, this is one of the earliest surviving examples apparently:
That night we found a pizza hut (!) and treated ourselves to an all you can eat buffet, looking forward to the next few weeks down south.
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