Kochi & Ernakulam

Friday 29/1/09, we had a lazy morning, wandered around the Fort and had brunch at about 11.30am. We then caught a ferry across the harbor to Ernakulam which the transport hub of Kerala. Kochi and Ernakulam have a population of about 1.4 million people. We made our way to the Reservation counter at the main train station to start the process of reserving some train seats in Northern India as we move towards Delhi. Yes it is true, we’ve finally thought ahead and planned our movements for the last week (last time I was in India I forgot what day it was).

We’ve really enjoyed Kerala and unfortunately will be heading north instead of into the Western Ghats which was one of my original thoughts.

To check seat availability, fill in applicable forms, then stand in line to reserve the seats and pay for the seats took about 90 minutes. But it was all good, it all went as planned, a train from Jaipur on Sunday morning to Agra and then a train on Wednesday morning from Agra to Delhi. That all done we caught an auto-rickshaw back to Kochi where I went on-line and searched for the best airfare to Jaipur (about 2000km on a train); Ernakulam is serviced by both an international and domestic Airport. It took a while (longer then the train tickets) but eventually I had us booked on a plane Friday morning to Jaipur. So now we can use our train tickets.

At High Tea this afternoon, we had a bit of a review of where we might stay tomorrowin Jaipur.
We had dinner late and didn’t get back to our accomodation until just before midnight.

Before we left I asked the manager of Daffodil homestay if he could book us a taxi for the morning as we had to be at the airport by 7.15am. He did, and hows this? When we came back from dinner the taxi and driver were parked out the front ready for us in the morning!!!!

Tahlia comment at dinner: ‘… there are a couple of interesting drinks on the menu… Cock and Pepsi…’