Fort Kochi has traded spices for two thousand years, and you can still smell it. Pepper drying in warehouses, cardamom in the air, ginger piled in sacks.
Breakfast was appam and stew at a tiny place near the Dutch cemetery, eaten with our hands and washed down with sweet tea.
Breakfast, the Kerala way
At the fishing nets, we bought prawns straight off the boat and carried them to a café that cooked them in green chilli and coconut for a few rupees.
Every kitchen in Kochi seemed to start with the same three things: coconut, curry leaves and a story.
The day ended with a Syrian Christian home-cooked supper of duck roast and rice, and a grandmother who refused to let anyone leave hungry.
Journeys inspired by this storyKerala by water9 days · from £1,850
Mei TanakaTravel designer, Asia
Plans journeys for Elsewhere and writes about the places that stay with them.
