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I visited Ernakalum, Allepy and Guruvayoor with my folks and aunt in late January, 2009. Kerala is truly god’s own country – very beautiful and tourist friendly. We covered the following places during our visit:

Day 01 – Ernakalum & Kochi

The cheapest way to see the backwaters of Ernakalum and cover some of the tourist locations near Kochi is to take a cruise boat. For one hundred bucks, they take you around from morning 9 till afternoon 1 in a boat that seats around 150 people. We started from Marine Drive at Ernakalum, and along the way we could see ships and boats of various sizes. Our first stop was the a Jewish island. The Jewish Synagogue is on this island, and it’s streets are dotted with shops selling antiques of various kinds. There is also a museum that traces the history of Kochi. Apparently there are only about 7 Jewish families currently living in that island. The rest have migrated to Israel, from where they first landed in India many generations ago.

After spending an hour there, we went to Fort Kochi next. It takes about half an hour to travel from one island to the other on a boat like ours. Fort Kochi has numerous tourist attractions, some of which are highlighted in this Wikipedia entry: Fort Kochi. If you are on a tourist boat like ours, you cannot see all these places. The tourist boat stops in Fort Kochi only for a limited period. Fort Kochi was our last stop, and we were back to Ernakalum from there. We also visited the Chottanikkarai temple, which is around 15 kms from Ernakalum.

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