There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing for a while a week or so ago about when I'd be coming back from India. For a while it seemed imminent but now it seems fixed back at the end of November. But knowing that nothing is ever fixed in ThoughtWorks I thought I should grab some holiday while I could. So this last weekend my young friend and I headed off to Kerala for some r&r.

It was wonderful. We flew to Kochi/Cochin (I'm winingly inconsistent on that front depending how Imperialist I'm feeling), spent a night in the old town then a night on a charming houseboat on the famous backwaters before coming back to Cochin and flying back to Bangalore in the early morning.

Fort Cochin (the old town) was so quiet and laid back it just seemed a million miles from Bangalore. We wandered around for a couple of hours, found a most excellent cafe (to which we would return an almost embarrassing number of times in the course of the next few days), got the boat across to the new town, decided it was too - erm new and then came back.

It was then we discovered the miracle cure I'd been praying for.


Two hours later...



On day 2 we headed south to Alappuzha/Allepey (see note above) for our backwater cruise. We had a houseboat to ourselves plus a crew of three! Cruising through the backwaters, watching the world go by, reading some Arundhati Roy and playing a little Scrabble: reader - I honestly don't think I've ever done anything quite as relaxing.


On our last half day in Cochin we rented bikes and headed down to the old Jewish Quarter (charmingly known as Jew Town)...


before ending up back at our favourite cafe for more cake and Scrabble. I'm sorry to say I came out the loser in our cumulative scoring. But I think I did pretty well to be only 9 points behind after my young friend got all her letters out TWICE IN A ROW (first time with "BASTARD" - how's that for style!)