This weekend our group made a trip to the Kerala coast.  Kerala is the next state over from Tamil Nadu, and is one of the wealthiest, most educated states in India, with a 99% literacy rate.  You can see the difference as soon as you cross the border.  It takes about 5-6 hours to drive to Kerala from Coimbatore - it's only 230k away, but the roads are pretty rough and packed full of cars, buses, rickshaws, ox carts, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, dogs, goats and anything else you can imagine.  After all the driving we've been doing for our interviews with the farmers, we've finally stopped covering our eyes every time we see a large vehicle barreling toward us head on...  but it's always an adventure ;)

Fort Cochin

Chinese fishing nets in Fort Cochin

We rented a great villa in Fort Cochin, the old town within Cochin, which is beautiful, and relative to what we've seen so far, quiet, peaceful and calm - it's a huge but welcome adjustment for a couple days.  Our villa owner is an Indian named Russell, who spent his first 40 years in the UK and speaks with a great British accent.  Compared with Coimbatore, Cochin is full of tourists and westerners...  Before coming to Kerala, I think I saw maybe two Westerners during my entire time Coimbatore, so we really stand out.  But we've decided we all kind of like it this way, it makes for a pretty unique experience. 

Cochin has a strong Portuguese and and Dutch influence - Vasco da Gama landed there in 1498.  We visited the Mattancherry Palace and Santa Cruz Basilica, and (as we seem to do everywhere we go) did some shopping ;)  Some of my favorite experiences in India have been meeting the shopkeepers and hearing their stories.  We met a great guy in a silk store in Cochin who was from Kashmir, a place I'd love to visit someday.   He was so proud of his hometown and loved that we were so interested to learn about it.

We also went down to Alleppy for a boat tour on the backwaters, an almost endless network of lagoons and canals that start at the coast and extend inland.  We spent several very relaxing hours cruising through the waterways past villages, farms, and fishing nets - probably the most quiet I've experience since getting to India.  The sunset was absolutely gorgeous!