The last day we wanted to do some shopping for home. Especially spices were on the todo list. It’s a possibility to take home some of the Indian flavor that was a good company to us in the last nearly 2 1/2 weeks. From the travel guide we knew that Rikshaw drivers offer guided tours through the town for very little money. Also here they make part of their revenue by commission from souvenir shops where they drop their guests. We first walked to clothes store (Fab India) and declined all offers. One guy was insisting enough to wait in front to the Fab India after I told him, we are later on looking for spices.
So it was two shirts for me (nothing for the others, oops) and then we let us catch by “Tanner” who spoke good English. The Tuktuk was to small for four, but he had his friend already in standby, so we started with the beach, the church San Francesco, where Vasco Da Gama is buried.
We’ve also been shown big and old trees (Banyan and a “rain tree”) and some stories around it. But, honestly, we were rather full of information, so a big part of it ran through and didn’t last. Nevertheless the dimensions of the biggest tree in town were overwhelming, I estimated 20 meters in each direction from the trunk.
One thing I kept in mind, as I found it funny. The house where Vasco da Gama once lived was often backdrop for Indian selfies. I never wondered about that, but the reason for the selfies was rather that the house appeared in a Bollywood movie than the earlier history. Even in Google Maps the spot is marked as shooting location (https://goo.gl/maps/R11Jf2aW5XV9uWKx7). Also some less historic sites we found rather interesting. We discovered where the laundry goes. According to our guide (no reason not to believe) this place was run by a caste that does this job for ages and all professionally done laundry in Kochi goes there. We saw, how to hang clothes without clips, the only washing machine – that has been donated by the government but did not meet the quality standards of hand wash – old electric irons for flattening the laundry and even older irons, heated by ember from coconut shells. We left a few rupies in the donation box.
The cleanest street in Kochi, Tanner said, was a street where only Brahmans (the highest caste) live. Indeed the walkway would match traditional Swabian standards. There was even an iconic drawing in front of every entrance door, painted anew every day. If this has to do with the superstition that our guide mentioned as a characteristic of brahmans, I don’t know.
Then the sales part of this trip followed. We were dropped off at three souvenir stores, all with multiple stores, they offered all from sculptures in the size of a thumb up to carpets for a castle, scarves and clothes of all kind and also various jewelry. We had some things presented to us and it did look nice, especially carpets impressed us, but neither die we have a demand or place for it, nor did we intend to spend the sum that was required to pay someone for more than a year of work. So we had a look around, and did only show interest in small figures of Ganesh as we wanted to bring one of these home. This didn’t stop the salesmen from pulling out a lot of other stuff but that was their job. At the third store – the driver told us that he would get gas payed by the store if we bought something – we bought a small wooden figure.
Then finally we headed for the shop with spices. We smelled and tasted a variety of powders in many shades and Andrea as well as Fiona made their selections. Besides masala, peppers, coriander, and so on we also bought a preparations to make masala chai (tea), the drink that was offered in nearly every place we visited. Its taste varied but the main ingredients were black tea and a mixture of spices plus mostly sugar. So we seem to be prepared to also have this experience at home – probably after some trial and error on the dosage straining.
The amount that was due for the guide and the two rikshaws was in the end calculated differently by the driver and by me, maybe because our turnover in the souvenir stores was not as expected, but as always there was an agreement end my Indian counterpart did shake his head in the usual way, meaning “OK”.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the Kochi airport from which we flew to Mumbai, where we didn’t even leave the airport but directly headed for the next plane back home to Germany.