We depart the hotel at 10.30, with a small line of staff waving us goodbye. Despite the slight boredom at times, it was a fabulous place to stay and we feel fully recharged to tackle the rest of our holiday.
An interesting drive up the coastal road to Fort Kochi, passing through many small villages. We see preparations for weddings, and men mending fishing nets.
Our hotel, the Eighth Bastion, is part of the same chain as the beach resort, and we realise that all the hotel we are using in the next week are also in the same group. Their standards are very high, and their hotels are also quite individual, so we are happy with this. This time we have a sunken bath in our bathroom, and a room that opens out almost directly to the pool.
We meet a few members of our group (which is going to be 11 in total), Tony and Martine and Rory. Our guide is Sadan, and his first mission takes us to a government alcohol shop to buy some beer. Not only is our hotel in Fort Kochi not licensed for alcohol at all, but the beer we buy only costs 80 rupees a bottle, rather than the 300 to 600 rupees we have been paying the hotels. There is a limit of five bottles per person so we get 10, and pile them into the tuk-tuk for the return journey.
Sadan's second mission is to find us an ATM with cash which he succeeds with, and takes us there on hotel bicycles. Sadly the queue is too long for us to get any cash before we have to get back to the hotel for our afternoon tour, but we still have the option of going there tomorrow early in the morning. And Mick buys a hat on the way back, so we are very satisfied.
The whole group gathers later for a trip to the local market, and f the purchase of some fish. Our hotel chef goes with us and basically chooses our fish. We get a large Mari-Mari, a mullet and some prawns.
Back at the hotel we have a cookery demonstration with our chef, and he cooks a prawn dish and a fish korma. He also shows us how to make roses out of cucumber?,white radish? And dye it red in beetroot juice. Then we all get to sit down and the hotel gives us a small dish of each curry we have seen being made.
A second trip out takes us to the Brunton Boatyard hotel where we board a boat for a sunset cruise in the harbour. No sun as it is overcast, but we have a delightful lady on board to point out some of the sites, and to sing to us.
Once back at the hotel we have dinner provided outside, with local musicians playing in the corner. To Mick and I it is our worst meal in India, being a bland fish dish with veg, but it is still nice to get to meet our other travelling companions, three Marys with Peter and Frank, and Katherine, Rory's new wife.
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