Cochin

If You Happen To Be In Muzuris

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The ancient port city of Muzuris came into the spotlight in 2012 with the critically acclaimed Kochi-Muzuris Biennale, but the Muzuris Heritage Project highlights the region in a more historical context.

Located just 30 km north of Kochi in Paravur and Channamangalam, the four museums–Kerala History Museum, Lifestyle Museum, Kerala Jewish History Museum, and Jewish Lifestyle Museum–were inaugurated this Sunday.

The four museums together present a comprehensive picture of the political and cultural history and lifestyle of the region….

…The Muziris Heritage Project, spearheaded by the Tourism Department, envisaged a group of heritage and tourism plans around key historical monuments in North Paravur, Kodungalloor, Chennamangalam, Pallippuram, Mala and other areas. Continue reading →

Hill Palace – Kochi

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Photo credits : Aju

Photo credits: Aju

The Hill Palace, built in a blend of Dutch and traditional Keralan architectural styles, was built in the year 1865 and spreads over 20,000 square feet in forty-nine buildings. Once the official residence of the maharaja of Cochin, today Hill Palace is one of Kerala’s largest archaeological museums. Continue reading →

The Story Behind Our New Banner’s Banners

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

If you visit this blog several times a day, or happen to chance upon any of our pages when the randomized top banner is just right, you may have noticed that for the past 48 hours a new picture has been thrown into the mix of our banner images, which have been growing steadily — and stealthily, given that the last time we addressed them explicitly was in 2011 — over the past few years.

The number of banner images has since doubled, with more dragonflies, some great-looking tree bark, picturesque tea plantations, and other scenes that we think make a pleasant and interesting (and hopefully not too distracting) backdrop to our written content on any given page. But the banner in question is about sharing and celebration, so I’m sharing a little bit about the image this time around.  Continue reading →

Cochin : exploring Mattancherry

/ Allegra / 2 Comments
Entrance to Mattancherry palace museum credit Ea Marzarte – Raxa Collective
Mattancherry wharf credit Ea Marzarte – Raxa Collective
Courtyard of a godown in Mattancherry credit Ea Marzarte – Raxa Collective
One goat looking for sweets in Mattancherry credit Ea Marzarte – Raxa Collective

Wandering around Mattancherry  : the vibrant murals covering the walls of Mattancherry Palace as well as each and every street; Dockers carrying sacks of produce urging you to move out of the way; Those boats that look more like works of art…not to mention the art installations on the docks… The streets that surround Spice Harbour, a development Raxa Collective is currently working on, are full of colours, spices and, yes goats… Continue reading →

Marine Drive – Cochin, Kerala

/ Salim.E.I / Leave a comment
Photo credit:Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credit: Ramesh Kidangoor

Marine Drive is considered one of the most beautiful parts of the city of Cochin, with a spectacular view of the backwaters and the Cochin harbour. This scenic strip is the popular hangout for many people with shopping, cinemas, restaurants, supermarkets, the rainbow bridge and a new walkway shaped like a house boat. Continue reading →

Kerala Cities – Ernakulam (Kochi)

/ Organikos / 2 Comments
Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Known as the commercial capital of Kerala, Ernakulam is the one of the largest cities in the state. Ernakulam refers to the eastern part of the twin cities Ernakulam-Kochi. Alive and throbbing with people, shopping centers, cinemas, hotels, offices, plush buildings, and restaurants; the factors that come together to create the quintessential city life can be experienced here with an International Airport an hour away. Ernakulam is the only city in Kerala where one can experience the conveniences of an urban lifestyle that is now increasingly prevalent in the larger cities of India, in addition to the criss-crossing backwaters that make the area famous. Continue reading →

Kochi’s Foodways Celebrated

/ Amie Inman / 8 Comments
Joan Nathan's Cochin Coriander-Cumin Chicken for Passover, adapted from Queenie Hallegua and Ofera Elias - cooked and styled by Andrew Scrivani NYTCREDIT: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Joan Nathan’s Cochin Coriander-Cumin Chicken for Passover, adapted from Queenie Hallegua and Ofera Elias – cooked and styled by Andrew Scrivani NYTCREDIT: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

We are always pleased to see Raxa Collective’s hometown in the news, but especially when the coverage focuses on cultural history in the part of town where we are developing a new property. Fort Kochi’s harbor area, including Bazaar Road where Spice Harbour (a waterfront hotel opening later this year, more on which in a future post) is located and where the spice trade is centered, completes the domestic route of the Malabar Coast’s spice trade. Spices are grown throughout the Western Ghats, they make their way down to sea level for transport in the coastal backwaters, and a large percentage end up on Bazaar Road where merchants, traders, godown (warehouse) keepers and others prepare them for shipment.  This has been the way of the spices for millennia, though Fort Kochi’s harbor has played its role in the spice route only in recent centuries. The New York Times writer Joan Nathan describes a culinary-religious heritage motivation for her visit here (minutes from our office location):

KOCHI, India — Dreaming of spices described in the Book of Kings, I came to this southern port city built in the 14th century to learn about its longstanding but tiny Jewish presence and its food, which some believe dates back to the time of the Bible. Continue reading →

My Recent Spice Route

/ Barbara Lang / 3 Comments

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Do you ever have a project you keep putting off?  And putting off, because the project just feels too all-consuming with no easily defined beginning or end? Welcome to my world of trying to write this brief recollection of my extraordinary experiences in India during the fall of 2011.

This is one of 3 reflections regarding my time in India and my pleasure meeting Amie Inman and visiting two of the Raxa Collective resorts.  This first entry focuses on visiting the markets of Cochin and Ernakulum.

Last October my husband Dave and I visited Amie Inman, with Raxa Collective, in Fort Cochin and Ernakulam, in Kerala.  At the time, I was the Adult Lifelong Learning Coordinator for the University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea around-the-world voyage. Dave and I had 6 days in Southern India and we didn’t waste a minute. Dave was returning to a region he loves while I was just being introduced, not knowing what to expect. Continue reading →

More on Urban Decay

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

I’ve portrayed urban decay  in an artistic light once or twice before – and since then, Kochi has had nothing but time to become more pitted and scarred (in a pleasant and non-violent way). The same walls I’ve walked past a dozen times seem to have sprouted roots – literally. Continue reading →

Marketable Faces: Part Three (Melting Pot)

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

The fringes of society are not the only point of convergence for odd characters. Least of all in India. Confronted by a foreigner with a camera, a man of modest means, excited by said foreigner’s appearance and interest in him, might act rather queerly. Although this response isn’t strictly natural in the general sense, it is by no means posed or artificial, as the subject is acting entirely of their own accord. So when they proffer bananas in shock, or hide their face behind a cup of chai or a cigarette, that’s the reaction I capture. The most frequent response is nervously calling out to friends nearby to “get a load of this”.

Continue reading →

Marketable Faces: Part Two (Men of a Certain Age)

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

There’s something about Indian men above the age of fifty. Their features seem to lend themselves to being photographed. When they have beards, they are twice as photogenic, and when they crack a smile, it’s twice as radiant as that of a man half their age. One of my favorite aspects of the British colonial residue (or perhaps the Indian custom rubbed off on the Brits!)  is the extravagant facial hair exhibited by many Indian men of a certain age – Keralites with enormous mustaches are not as common as in Tamil Nadu, but when they do it, they do it with class.

Continue reading →

Marketable Faces: Part One (Men in Blue)

/ Milo Inman / Leave a comment

Throughout Kerala, colorful trucks unload tons of produce and commodities every morning. Wholesalers, warehouses, and markets all maintain a steady flow of goods – and the cycle begins anew each morning. I occasionally venture into central Cochin’s main market (Broadway) to photograph the process, and the colorful people that are washed about by the endless tide of fruits and vegetables, fish and fowl.

Continue reading →

It May Look Friendly…

/ Milo Inman / Leave a comment

Kerala’s bus stations are scheduled Pandora’s Boxes. Locals have learned to live with the emergent demons. An unprepared visitor might have trouble coping with the dense mass of humanity that is the spirit of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation. It is in fact questionable to me whether locals are actually bothered by the absurd multitude of other passengers, or by the laughable impossibility of gaining access to an undersized and uncomfortable seat. Who knows whether they enjoy the sensation of being in a dog-fighting spacecraft during their daily transit or not? It’s a distinct possibility that the acceptance (or insensitivity) of these people for ridiculous roads was grandfathered in during what I can only presume was the Wild West for aspiring colonial drag racers… “Exciting East”?

Continue reading →

Peel, Warp, Rust

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

Urban decay. From a bird’s eye view, an old city overgrown may look as clean and composed as a modern metropolis. But for an insect on a wall, every surface is a landscape; cracked and scarred, bruised and faded. Paint peels, creepers climb, and dust invades, creating an eerily beautiful  visage of element and age. Historic Fort Kochi has no shortage of crumbling buildings and waterfronts, most of which are still in use. Mattancherry’s spice wholesalers operate out of buildings with as much character as themselves, and ferries come and go from half-sunken jetties of old stone. Any of a thousand walls can be seen as a canvas, small pieces of which may paint a tale of time.  Continue reading →

Our Gang, Thevara (Sunday Shuttle)

/ Crist Inman / 2 Comments

The friendliest fellows to be found.  Any passerby will get a smile.  Any passerby who tries to click a snapshot will get the royal treatment: a split second shift from the middle of a game (which was the point of the snapshot) to the most spectacular improvised pose that could be mustered. Continue reading →

Evolved Cooperation

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

Any given morning in the neighborhood called Thevara, where we have some wonderful friends, the fishermen do their thing a few meters from the riverfront walkway.  To call that cooperation is like calling the kettle black.  But just as we found this explanation of man-animal cooperation fascinating, this morning’s mobile phone snapshots got interesting.

Continue reading →

Our Gang, Thevara (About The Clever One)

/ Crist Inman / 4 Comments

This young lady in the foreground of the photo above is special.  She has already broken an unspoken, unwritten, and increasingly irrelevant gender barrier in which girls play with girls and boys with boys: her brother has welcomed her into the fellowship that used to be strictly a fraternity.  It helps that she is clever.

Continue reading →

Kerala’s Stars

/ Amie Inman / 4 Comments

The colorful stars that begin to grace Kerala buildings in December from homes, to businesses, to places of worship have humble beginnings despite their current flashy status.  The were originally a simple white 7 point star that correlated with the beacon leading to the Christmas manger.

Many of these folded and cut paper stars are the handiwork of a group of women in a fishing villages around the southern Kerala city of Kollam. Continue reading →

Kerala: Seeing & Learning

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

As I begin putting myself in situations in which photographing people in their natural state is more possible, I’m finding that I not only become more comfortable doing so, but the quality of my photographs improves. The subject doesn’t always have to be smiling, or even friendly – my best portraits are the ones that express the authenticity of a subject’s disposition and emotion in a single frame. Asking a scowling subject to smile will usually result in a sheepish grin, or a reluctant curve upward of the lips that ends up radiating a general feel of puzzlement.  Continue reading →

Any Given Monday

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

In the world’s largest democracy, there are a diversity of ideologies that would make any other democracy blush in modesty.  Today, on the streets of Cochin, you could have had a very small sense of that. Continue reading →