Kochi, Kerela Jess Cook, January 2, 2025June 14, 2025 After the super long car journey, we finally arrived in Kochi. The driver who picked us up in the morning had made a point to show us him zero-ing the mileage on his car, which immediately made me suspicious therrre I thought there might be a problem. When booking the MakeMyTrip car, the system calculates the mileage from Google Maps for that journey. So if the driverre , in our case, takes a detour for lunch or just picks a longer route, then technically we need to pay for the extra miles. It turned out we needed to pay for around 30 additional miles, which we tried our best to contest, but in the end we gave him part of the money. We met Sam and Dan at the hotel. They seemed on good form and had spotted a restaurant for dinner on the way to the hotel from the airport. We walked over to dinner and caught up over dinner and drinks. We were all fairly tired, so it was an early evening. The next morning, James and I started the day with a run to the Jewish sector of Kochi, which reminded me a lot of Panaji with the beautiful buildings. We all then took an Uber down to the beach, about an hour away. It was lovely to be back on the beach. We went to the Chilled Cafe for breakfast and then wandered down the beach to find some sunbeds and a place to get a drink. Once we got hungry for lunch, we moved from the sun loungers to the restaurant area. We opted for the Indian menu. I left my order with James while I popped to the ladies, and when I came back, the group all with smirky faces said, “We can’t eat here; the Indian chef has gone home.” I thought they were joking at first, but it turned out to be the truth. I think the Chinese chef was still on duty for the day but we didn’t fancy Chinese. The rest of the evening, we grabbed some drinks in a bar overlooking the beach to watch the sunset and played hours upon hours of cards – James seemed to be on a winning streak. On New Year’s Eve, James and I went for another run – it was nice to be back on much shallower inclines. We went to the Jewish area again. Once you find a fairly nice place to run you’re onto a winner. James spotted a dosa shop on our run so he proposed going there for breakfast. Unfortunately, we got there with Sam and Dan and the owner said he wasn’t going to open for a while, but he saw us umming and ahhing about what to do instead so he came over and recommended another restaurant close by. This seemed to be a very popular, although definitely not one I would have gone into by just looking at it from the outside. We all agreed the dosas were very delicious, as were the multiple chai masalas we ordered. We had been raving just a little about Jew Town, so we decided we should explore it more during the day when it was a bit livelier. It was very hot, so we we took some respite from the heat in the Mokha Coffee Cafe. Here, we pulled out the cards and sat for another few hours sipping on cool drinks and playing cards. The main plan for New Year’s Eve celebrations included watching the setting fire to a big Santa Claus, known locally as the Pappanji. Fort Kochi at 6pm was now very fun and lively. Walking around, everyone was out and in great spirits, and there were tons of Santa models standing out and proud in surrounding gardens – in the coming days we found these all burnt to the ground too. The Pappanji Some of the many Santa Claus’ After dinner and drinks, we went out to explore how the Christmas Pappanji was doing. By now it was dark and everyone was out, things were getting very wild which we put down to a mixture of alcohol and drugs. The area where the Pappanji was being set alight was so full of people it was too hot for us to even stand outside. We weren’t enjoying the vibes and there were still a few hours to kill until midnight so we called it a day and continued with a few more rounds of cards back at the hotel. We thought the Kochi Carnival was going to be on New Year’s Day but it turned out they changed the date to the 2nd of January. On the train to Mahe, we met someone from Kerala who recommended watching a Kathakali. We booked tickets for a Kathakali for tourists so we could watch the artists apply their make up before the show and there were also demonstrations explaining the differences between each of the intricate eye movements the dancers make. It was a good introduction, but I would definitely be keen to see a full performance in action – apparently, these can go on for 9 hours or so. After the show, we wanted to grab a few drinks (and maybe play some more cards), but after trying out four or so bars we came to the understand that nowhere sells alcohol on New Year’s Day. The restaurants that were open would only allow us to eat in the restaurants; they wouldn’t even let us buy or drink a soft drink. We ended up going to our dinner reservation early and then calling it an early night from there. Our last day with Dan and Sam was on the 2nd of January. This was also supposed to be our last day in Kochi, but we decided to extend our time in Kochi so we could catch the New Year’s Day festival. We went out for a quick bite to eat in Jew Town, had a few chai masalas, and then said goodbye to our lovely friends. Our hotel didn’t have space to extend our stay for another night so we ended up staying closer to the festival. We asked at the first hotel what time the carnival would be and then at our homestay, but we weren’t getting any consistent times, so we ended up going out around 3.30 p.m. It was a lot of standing around to start with, with people lining up down the roads in great anticipation. All the locals were now outside their houses, either on the pavements/roads or peering out of their windows or standing on their rooftops/balconies. The show started at about 4.30 p.m. The event tried its best to be organised, but it wasn’t. Some of the acts would stop for a good five minutes, holding everyone up behind them, even if the police officers were telling them to hurry up and move on. Despite the slowness, it was great to see the city on such good form, with everyone having a great time. By the time it was 6.30 p.m we called it a day and got pizza at a restaurant we had been eyeing up for a little while. By the time we finished dinner, we went out to find the parade still continuing, and the first performers of the parade had only just reached the finish line, so we managed to catch a few of our favourite acts again! On our actual last day in Kochi, we decided to take a run down to Fort Kochi. We were now too far away from Jew Town to run there and back. We found this lovely French restaurant for brunch, albeit with a bit of a heftier price tag than standard Indian restaurants, where we chilled out for an hour or two until our Uber driver was scheduled to pick us up – again it turned out to be cheaper to hire a driver rather than purchase a second-class train ticket for each of us. India