The Kochi Experience
Explore this green city
Kochi (also known as Cochin) is a city in southwest India's coastal Kerala state. It has been a port since 1341, when a flood carved out its harbor and opened it to Arab, Chinese and European merchants. Sites reflecting those influences include Fort Kochi, a settlement with tiled colonial bungalows and diverse houses of worship. Cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, typical of Kochi, have been in use for centuries.
I visit Kochi almost every year
Sam Qualla,Sri Lanka
Michael, the auto-rickshaw driver, sings opera as he drives us to Santa Cruz Basilica. Great trills and crescendos are louder even than the putt, putt, putt of his three-wheeler’s little motor.I am enjoying my Kerala visit and I ask him why he’s happy. “This is my own air-conditioned Ferrari and I have a beautiful nine-year-old daughter and a lovely wife. My life is good and I love to sing,” he says. He leads while my friend, Karen, and I sing along to a couple of songs we all know – not opera. When he drops us outside the church we have had such a great ride we tip him handsomely and he buzzes off, in his little yellow Ferrari, singing loudly to the tourist attractions in and around Kochi.