Goodbye Kochi.......

                         

Interesting street art in communist Kerala.....

 The calendar has clicked over into December & the final month of my journey around India. I sense a slowing down in the pace of the travel as I commence the final northward leg back to the starting point, in Mumbai.

              For the last four days, I have been in the old town of Kochi. The tourists are beginning to flow in as the temperatures in northern climes begin to drop and I can sense the relief amongst the hotel-keepers, rickshaw drivers and restaurateurs that cash will soon begin to flow once more. I can now better understand why the loans against gold jewellery industry is such a thriving sector, if one is to believe all the advertising hoardings. The problem in Kerala, (Kerala translates into ‘Land of Coconuts’ in the Malayam language) is that it is in a race with one horse, virtually all economic activity being dependent on tourism. There is very 

I am definitely going to ignore stupid tourists with cameras!

little real industry, although the military makes a strong effort to create employment with numerous barbed wire and walled off installations along the coast. Not an economist, but it does seem to me that India urgently needs an industrial strategy to expand basic export oriented manufacturing (textiles, electronic assembly would be examples) to sop up the massive over-supply of labour and generate consumer purchasing power.

             From Kochi, I took a second boat tour of the ‘backwaters’, this time in a man powered, pole propelled boat with 16 others from places as varied Australia to Croatia. One lady that I chatted to explained that she had been abandoned on the streets of Delhi as a one year old baby, rescued and adopted by a family in Belgium. This was her first visit back to India and it was interesting to listen to her, as she tried to explain the mixed emotions she was feeling. As our boat was small, we were able to penetrate some very narrow waterways, so low in places that we had to flatten ourselves to pass under the vines and creepers that in places formed tunnels. I was struck by the fact that compared to other jungles I have visited, that tended to be noisy & raucous places with the sounds of monkeys calling, insects buzzing and birds screeching, that this Kerala jungle was silent, totally silent, except for the splash & gurgle of the pole at work. It was a beautiful experience to ‘hear’ 100% silence around one, something that us city dwellers experience so infrequently. The silence does beg the question of what happened to, or indeed was there ever any wild life in the forests of the backwaters?

              Apparently of the western tourists that come to India, many come to learn yoga and the secrets of therapeutic massage. All those with whom I have spoken on the subject, express how worthwhile and spiritually uplifting has been there journey into these subjects---perhaps this old, boots on the ground, geezer is missing something.

              The tourist sector of Kochi is approx. 14 kms from the main city and port area known as Ernakulam. In anticipation of very crowded early Monday morning  commuter roads over a route that includes two traffic clogged bridges, I have relocated  for just a single night to Ernakulam city, to be near the central railway station, from where my train departs at 8.00am tomorrow for the 10 hour trip to Mangalore.