Fort Kochi

This is officially the cutest little fishing village / island with stalls, giant chinese fishing nets, palmtrees and sandy beaches. the dresscode here for blokes is very odd, they wear ordinary shirts and these strange wrap around sheets that they put like nappy skirts that come down to the knees. Interesting. There are sacred hearts of jesus pictures everywhere complete with the shining red heart light, and every hostel or "home stay" as they call them, has a copy of the holy bible in hindi. There are also a number of fish monger stalls all lined up along the docks where the chinese fishing nets are. The fishermen sell the catch of the morning and you can chose your fish and then bring it to a restaurant and they cook it for you however you want it.
This evening we went to a demonstration of Kathakali, a local traditional Performance Art type thing. It was a reinactment of one of the numerous stories of the Mahabarata, the long hindi fables much like The holy bible. This demo was of the body language that they used to use "back in the day" here on the islands. They face contorts into various exaggerated expressions of anger, fear, happiness, jealousy and so on. Then there are the body movements that represent verbs or nouns. It takes about 4 minues to act out the word "go". Makes you wonder how they conducted an entire conversation. They must have danced around for ages just to say "Hey hows it going?" Though I guess it was never used in real life but only for performance or cultural purposes. I have to admit that we stuck it out as long as we could but frankly it got a bit tedious and repetetive after a while. Just not our thing I guess. Check out the pics when I post them up! Très Strange!