Cochin - President of India

A waiter at the Indian Coffee House (he didn't really like his picture being taken).

We both liked Cochin, it made a nice change to be back in a bigger city after 10 days on the beach and a few days in the backwaters. Fort Cochin is on a large island within Cochin but weirdly enough there is no Fort there now, even so we quite liked the atmosphere of the place and spent a few hours wandering around. The mix of massive Catholic churches, with inspirational slogans on the outside walls and Chinese fishing nets is the kind of mad mix that you seem to get here in India.

The President of India was visiting Cochin that day so the number of khaki shirts outnumbered the natives: there were at least twenty policemen on every 20m stretch of road. It was the first time that we saw Indians walking on the pavements, as far as we could work out the major thing the President did that day from the paper "The Hindu" is water some tree saplings to replace the trees that the town council had removed in order for his helicopter to land the last time he was in town: he was very angry that they did that quote unquote... very eco friendly is India!!!