The Chinese Fishing Nets are perhaps the best-known tourist attraction in Cochin. Unfortunately, according to the guy in the orange shirt, the fishing ain't so good these days. Consequently, tourists are the big catch. Although not required, it was pretty clearly understood that a tip was expected after the gang allowed us to help pull in the net, hold a fish, and generally be part of the experience. Throughout our trip we tipped guides and drivers. The amounts were very small by U.S. standards--for instance, 200 rupees per day ($5) for our driver, who was at our disposal 24 hours a day, and 50 rupees to guides at Periyar Tiger Reserve.
One thing that struck us while doing the tourist trail in Cochin is how the guidebooks tend to characterize all the sites in bland, westernized terms--see the palace with its works of art, sample the local fare along the dock, etc. etc. What they fail to emphasize, however, is just how non-western and strikingly different India is from the usual First World tourist experience. Dust, noise, trash, smoke, poverty, decay, traffic, confusion, colors, language barrier, rudimentary services--all very exciting, exhilarating and decidedly non-western.
A few miles inside the state of Tamil Nadu, which borders Kerala. A very early morning tour around a sprawling plantation in the flatlands east of the Western Ghats. Like many park rangers around the Periyar Tiger Preserve, our guide was a former elephant poacher who was arrested and given a job as a guide and wildlife protector. He had a bit of a Gandhi look about him, and he played a haunting melody on a wooden flute after our brief white bread and cheese lunch next to a small Hindu temple under a banyan tree at the edge of a rushing river.
