Cochin (Kochi)

I had seen a documentary about Cochin and was very excited about it. What i remembered the most were the suspended fishing nets and the spices. As soon as we got down the ferry, we saw the fishing nets but they were not in function at that time. The area is very lively and we see mainly tourists on the street. We even found the best coffee place ever serving excellent breakfast as well. We did spent a lot of time there in the morning...we had to wait a long time to be served!


There are maybe 30 fishing nets aligned on the coast. They are a structure similar to a four fingers hand, one finger attached to each corner of the net. The hand has an arm with weights (rocks of different dimensions) at the end of it to balance the whole thing. When the arm goes down, the hand opens and the net sinks into the water. It stays down for about 5 minutes before the fishermen starts pulling on the rocks to make the net come back up again. We spent a good 2 hours watching the nets going down into the water and back up, very often containing no fish at all.

I also rented a bike to visit the older part of Fort Cochin, Jew town. Lots of antiques shops but what i was looking for were spices storage rooms. I went in 2 places where women where sifting pepper. The air was filled with dust and i could not stay very long before starting sneezing. Great people and i would have stayed one more day.