Tuesday, March 21

 

 

We woke up and had our earliest breakfast yet. We said goodbye to the two Australian couples who had a car waiting to take them to the backwaters at Aleppy for an overnight trip.

We walked the ten minutes to Cabral Yard, intending to get a chai and samosa like we did yesterday. The café has a large crowd round it so we scrap that idea. I go in though to photograph the wall I saw yesterday. Someone has turned the flaked-away paint into two mythological creatures.

We will walk down to Pepper House to see an installation by Nicola Durvadula and John Tilbury. I will like both the objects and the music. We will also both enjoy Hanna Tuulikki and Leighton Peirce’s very different installations.

The Pepper House design shop will hold our attention for some time, until we find a tuk-tuk driver to take us to Fabindia. After that we will walk, find a café for lunch where I will have chicken biryani with chicken so stringy you would not believe it could ever have existed.

We will follow this with a couple more gallery visits and a stop at a restaurant and hotel called The Malibar Junction for a Kingfisher. I will look at the menu and wish we had found it sooner. The chef has won food awards and among the starters they offer snapper gravlax with gooseberry sauce.

We will set off to walk back to Tissa’s Inn. I will count thirteen tuk-tuks within sight, all standing idle. Sure enough, one of the drivers will offer us a free ride if we go to Fabindia first, where he will get free gasoline. Irma will wave a carrier bag and point out we have just been there. No, no, they have a much bigger branch near the Syrian Church (close to our hotel).

Once we have said okay the driver will take us to Fabric of India, the same shop we got taken to yesterday. We will spend ninety seconds inside, the driver will get no gas because we went there yesterday, and we will walk twenty metres to our hotel, where Irma will race to the pool.

We will have our final dinner in the Jackfruit Tree. I will have kappa – otherwise known as tapioca – with fish curry, and love it. Afterwards we will pay, pack and go to bed.