Tuesday we said good-bye to Nalini and spent almost the entire day traveling to Cochi (Cochin). Cochi has a much more pleasant ambience the north. It's much less crowded, fewer horns, less air polution, nicer houses, much less agressive street vendors. Our guide said that the literacy rate is 98% and that 90% of people own land.
There are no monkeys in Cochi so that is a definite drawback but we did pass two elephants on the way into the city Wednesday morning. It is warmer and more humid but not uncomfortable.
There are lots of palm trees. There is a guild of workers who climb the palm trees to tap the juices. They let it ferment for about five hours and then it has quite a kick... or so we were told by the guide. We didn't try it ourselves. Vasco de Gama came to Cochi in the early 1500s and it was dominated by the Portugese for several hundred years after that. The the most common religion is Christianity.
We visited the fish market area that had some very contented looking cats, a very old Christian church, the local palace and the Jewish quarter. Christians first came here around 50 AD (St. Thomas) and Jews in the 700s. At one time there were 5,000 Jews here but now there are only 13. The Jewish synagague was a beautiful, sacred space (no pictures allowed).
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