ManicDDaily

We have graduated to jasmine. And Christina has been allowed to operate the food processor.

This means that we have definitely moved up a notch or two in the small steamy world that is Fort Cochin. (Or Fort Kochi, under its its original Indian and now official name. Many names of places in India were re-transliterated a few years ago – so Cochin became Kochi – Bombay – Mumbai – Madras–Chennai.)

But the reconfiguration I am talking about now is ours, moving from mid-budget (and rather heavily laden) backpackers to lap-of-luxury (and packed light, considering) travelers.

In other words, we’ve sprung for our last night or so in India, meaning that we now have a room in a top hotel “with a garden view” complete with freshly-pressed kimonos, straw bedroom slippers and jasmine blossoms gyred upon our pillows. (Due to the off-season, there is a thirty percent discount.)

Being India, there are a ton of crows that hang out by the pool–we have a pool!– often resting on shower head, and in the late afternoon–we are just by the harbor–there’s a build-up of fishy smell–but the water is clear and blue and chlorinated, and it really is quite nice.

The move-up in cooking occurred at the Flavour Cooking School, where Meera let Christina go hands-on with the blender. (Almost every dish involves the blending of a “paste.” )

So we are almost gone. Before I signed off from India – and who knows if I will, as we have about a 24 hour journey ahead of us – I wanted to make all kinds of point about safety and misogyny, and the difficulties and wonders of travel here, but there is no time to make the points clearly. So better to just post some of the last day’s photos.

They include: our hotel–crow and cat–, Meera Leo and Christina cooking in the dark (during a power outage), the cook at our hotel taking us back into the kitchen on discovering we were interested in cooking, people pouring out of the Catholic Church – many more on the shady sides, and various family members of Sabu, our driver from Munnar.

PS thanks so much to all of you who have followed this trip. I’m sorry for my disjointedness. I really appreciate your support. Must run now.

This entry was posted on April 21, 2013 at 4:19 am and is filed under India, Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: cat up a tree, cooks, India, manicddaily, Sabu's family, springing for a pool