Private Fort Kochi and Mattancherry Tuk-Tuk Tour with Hotel Pickup

Fort Kochi waterfront and the Chinese fishing nets

The tour begins on the seafront of Fort Kochi, where the giant cantilevered Chinese fishing nets lean out over the water. Each net is a frame of teak and bamboo about ten metres high, lowered and raised by a team of fishermen using counterweight stones, a technique said to have arrived from the court of the Chinese traders in the fourteenth century. They are still in daily use, and in the morning you can watch the catch being sold on the sand beside them.

Your driver-guide stops here for photographs and explains how the spice trade made this small harbour one of the most contested ports on the Malabar Coast. The nets are the first thing most visitors search for in a Fort Kochi tuk-tuk tour, and the waterfront is also where you see the mix of colonial bungalows, church towers and fishing boats that defines the town. Early morning and late afternoon give the best light.

St Francis Church, Santa Cruz Basilica and the Dutch Cemetery

A few streets inland stands St Francis Church, built by the Portuguese in 1503 and the oldest European church in India. It is a plain, whitewashed building, but it holds a remarkable story: the Portuguese navigator who opened the sea route to India was buried here in 1524 before his remains were taken back to Lisbon, and his original gravestone is still inside. The church passed from the Portuguese to the Dutch and then the British, and the tombstones on the walls read like a history of the town.

Nearby, the Santa Cruz Basilica is the opposite in style: a pastel Gothic cathedral rebuilt in 1905 with painted ceilings and tall twin towers. The Dutch Cemetery of 1724, on the way to the beach, is the oldest European cemetery in India, a walled plot of weathered tombs that your guide points out from the gate. Entrance fees to these sites are included.

Mattancherry Palace, the Dutch Palace

The tuk-tuk then crosses into Mattancherry, the trading quarter south of Fort Kochi. The Mattancherry Palace was built by the Portuguese around 1555 as a gift to the Raja of Kochi and later renovated by the Dutch, which is why it is known as the Dutch Palace. From outside it is a modest two-storey building in Kerala style with white walls and sloping tiled roofs around a central courtyard temple.

Inside are some of the finest murals in Kerala: entire walls painted in rich reds, ochres and greens with scenes from the Ramayana and other Hindu epics, dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The galleries also display the palanquins, weapons and portraits of the Kochi royal family and a coronation hall. Allow about thirty minutes; the palace is closed on Fridays, and the entrance fee is included in this tour. Photography of the murals is not permitted, so look carefully.

The spice markets of Mattancherry

Mattancherry was the warehouse district of the spice trade for five hundred years, and its lanes still smell of it. Your driver-guide walks you through the spice market, where sacks of black pepper, cardamom, cloves, turmeric, dried ginger and star anise are weighed in old godowns with timber beams and high roofs, and traders sort the harvest by hand. Kerala pepper was the reason Portuguese, Dutch and British fleets fought over this coast, and the guide explains how the trade still works today.

This is the part of the Kochi spice market tour where you can buy spices at wholesale prices, pure and freshly dried, which makes a lighter and better souvenir than anything in the tourist shops. The walk takes about twenty minutes and leads directly into the antique lanes of Jew Town, which grew out of the same trade.

Jew Town and the Paradesi Synagogue

The route ends in Jew Town, the lane of merchants' houses and antique shops that leads to the Paradesi Synagogue. The synagogue was built in 1568 by the Sephardic community that settled in Kochi under the protection of the Raja, and it is the oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth of Nations. Its clock tower was added in 1760, and inside the floor is paved with hand-painted blue-and-white Chinese tiles, each one different, beneath Belgian glass chandeliers and brass lamps.

The synagogue ticket is the one entrance fee not included in the tour; it is paid at the door, and the building is closed on Fridays, Saturdays and Jewish holidays, so on those days you see the lane and the exterior. The antique shops around it sell brass, wood carvings and old doors, and this is a good final stop before the tuk-tuk returns you to your hotel or the cruise terminal.