Cochin on India’s south-west coast is a gaggle of islands and peninsulas lapped by the waters of the Arabian Sea. For over 600 years traders and explorers have been coming here to buy (and in some cases pillage) a share of the riches of the region like tea, spices and timber. In the process Cochin was transformed from an obscure fishing village into the first European township in India, described by our guidebook as an “unlikely blend of medieval Portugal, Holland and an English village grafted onto the tropical Malabar coast.”We ourselves came to Cochin not by boat but by yet another bouncing, lurching westerly bus ride. Passing through one small village, we made way to allow a farmer riding his elephant to pass. With our arrival in Cochin, we had crossed the width of South India, coast to coast from Tranquebar, for a total bus fare of less than AUD$10, and seen life and landscape up close and personal in a way that would not have been possible by any other means. The slight discomfort was a small price to pay.
We checked into the Four Seasons Guesthouse on the tip of Fort Cochin peninsula in the midst of the major historical sites and ventured out in the mornings and late afternoons when the sun and humidity were less bothersome. There’s plenty to see, including:
- The giant cantilevered Chinese fishing nets first installed by traders from the 1400 AD court of Kublai Khan. We saw the nets being lowered and raised in the early morning – it took five men on each to operate the stone counterweights dangling from ropes, and yet the result of each cycle appeared to be only a handful of sardine-size fish.
- St Francis Church, India’s oldest European church, built by the Portuguese in the early 16th century. Several of the earliest European residents were buried here, including the Portuguese navigator and adventurer Vasco da Gama who died in Cochin on Christmas Eve, 1524. Although his remains were removed to Lisbon 14 years later, his simple headstone remains in the church floor. Other more clearly marked headstones are mounted on the northern and southern interior walls.
- The striking, pale yellow Catholic Santa Cruz Basilica dating from 1506.
- Mattancherry (“Dutch”) Palace built by the Portuguese in 1555 as a gift to the Raja of Kochi, Veera Varma, to lubricate trade deals and to provide compensation for a temple they had pillaged in the vicinity. The Dutch renovated the Palace in 1663 – hence the alternative name.
- Pardesi Synagogue in nearby Jew Town (not sure whether such a geographical descriptor would be pc elsewhere but that’s its name here), a legacy of the early Jewish settlement in the area.
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