Fort Kochi

Once again, we were surprised when we got to Fort Cochin (or Fort Kochi ... the constantly changing names were starting to confuse me).

India hadn't ceased shocking and exasperating us. I could no longer count the number of times one of us had muttered "TII" or "This is India" under our breaths.

Fort Kochi shocked us for a different reason though.

Here, there was such an enormous crush of different cultures, Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, Jewish ....

One of the iconic images of Fort Kochi is the Chinese fishing nets.
In the setting sun, they looked beautiful. However, pictures do not capture the incredibly strong smell of rotting fish that accompanied them.

Not far from the nets are the large churches that were put up by the Portuguese.

Even the old buildings in the areas (many of which are still in use as residences or businesses) captured a flavour of somewhere not India.
We began wandering over to "Jew Town". Here was the home of the Malabar Jews, one of the oldest Jewish populations in the world.
And being in India, of course we managed to find a spice market.
The smell was again intense.