The Backwaters of Fort Kochi

The hostel I'm staying at is right next what are known as the backwaters of Fort Kochi. When I was in Goa and trying to book a tour of the backwaters, the pot-smoking travel agent dismissively referred to the backwaters as "where all the [expletive] flows out from inland to the sea." Knowing India... there's probably a lot of truth in that. Nonetheless, the waters are actually pretty cool to see. Just don't think about it too much.

Kashi Art Cafe -
where if you tilt your head just so, you too can have a stiff neck

When I woke up, I re-met the three dudes staying in my dorm. It turns out they grew up together in Muscat. If you, like me, have never heard of Muscat, then you, like me, would probably also nod your head, smile, and continue engaging in conversation until it is later revealed that Muscat is a city in Oman (the capital, actually, though that tidbit didn't come up in conversation). They've since all scattered, but are reuniting here in Fort Kochi for a few days. Also, one of them is the Indian doppleganger of my friend BP from college. It was uncanny not only how much the two of them looked the same, but also had the same outspoken "whatever, I'll do what I want" personality. Definitely made me do a double-take a few times throughout the day.

Kashi Art Cafe - "We're expat-friendly!"

We all went to brunch together at this awesome spot called the Kashi Art Cafe. I think this was the first time I'd eaten fresh fruit in a long, long time. I'd been warned numerous times that you can't trust the fruit here because it's washed in the water you can't drink. At this point I've been sick so often, even while being careful about what I eat, so why continue to deprive myself if I'm going to be sick anyway? Plus that fruit looked GOOD. One of the dude's brought his girlfriend to brunch with us and she spent the rest of the day with us too.

The view from the airline's 6th-story office. Not bad, Oman Air.

After brunch, one of the dudes, ROR, has to change his flight but to do so needed to physically go to the airline's office for some asinine "this is how it's done in India" reason. So we took a ferry (we're in the backwaters, remember?) to get there.

I love ferries. Maybe it's because I don't spend all that much time out on the water, but ferries are awesome. They're like buses... but in the water! Water buses! Mind-blowing.

WATER BUSES ARE AWESOME

Afterward ROR's successful flight change, we went to another bar for drinks. While I was there, I was telling the others about my journey to find my roots. ROR's family is from Kerala and he was like "well, we'll have to make sure you find them while you're here." He also started trying to teach me a few words in Malayalam, the language spoken here. Turns out instead of assuming I speak Hindi, people should really be assuming I speak Malayalam. I'm terrible at languages though, so I pretty much immediately forgot every word he tried to teach me.

The food wasn't... meal-y, so in the cab on the way home we stopped by Domino's. Because where better to eat in India than Domino's? (ok, ...it actually was pretty good.) We finished off the night at a seaside bar. Backwater-side bar? It was on the water. It was cool.

CONTINUE ON to Fort Kochi Part 3: Kerala: An Anthropologist's Dream