Lost in Time in Cochin

 We have all had those moments when a smell, sound image or taste transport us completely to another time and place. The barrier of years between two completely separate events shatters and briefly they merge. There were four events in Cochin that warped my sense of time, not in the instant recall I’ve talked about above but in a more subtle slightly disorientating way. Just the feeling that if I could time travel hundreds, or in one case, thousands of years I would be having exactly the same experience. 

Some minor examples. We caught the ferry from our hotel to eat out, the ferry terminal was 200 years old and had not changed. We had to pay the princely sum of 6 cents each, here’s what it looked like. Fortunately there was a much shorter ladies queue and Sue could get my ticket

The restaurant was on the seafront with the inevitable mosquitoes, as The Dalai Lama said “if you think you’re too small to matter you’ve never shared a bedroom with a mosquito”. Sometimes the Indians do the bare minimum, but in the battle against the mossies they went nuclear

An unfortunate man (with a pO2 of about zero) waved a vast smoking pan of the local repellent everywhere

It hung around for about 20 minutes and asphyxiated every flying insect as well as a few diners. This method has also been around for several centuries.

Then the Chinese fishing nets, these were introduced by the Mongols 900 years ago, same spot same design.

And then disorientation of millennia at a Shiva temple, it was a festival day and we were lucky to see…..

The smells the sounds and the sights were mesmerising and this ceremony has been going on for over 2000 years

We loved losing time in Cochin