By Rickshaw with Joseph to Fort Cochin

As soon as I get out of the Hotel entrance, I’m hassled – “Taxi Sir?”; “Sight-seeing Sir?”; “See the wonders of the weed in the harbour Sir?”, “Take you for a ride Sir?” . . . yeah – right ☺

I smile sweetly at them all and thank them very much – but no thanks, I’m just out for a walk.

I need some cash from the nearby cash point so that I can get the ferry over to Fort Cochin, or the Old Town for a look-see.
Joseph [I seem to have met quite a few – presence of Catholicism maybe?] is waiting to pounce when I return on foot – lurking by the roundabout. He waves a tattered brochure at me and launches into his affable schpeel offering to take whatever route or time I want to go look around - in his auto-rikshaw of course.
He’s slick and silky-smooth – he should be – he’s had plenty of practice! I’ve no idea what his success rate is, but he later told me that in the season he’ll usually ply the normal tourist areas for fares in the first part of the day and then sometimes come over the water to hover outside The Taj Malaba to try his luck.
The rate quoted was 50Rps an hour – ‘what the hell’ I thought, let’s do it. I can just sit back and let him do the work.



. . . Turns out I made a good choice . . . .

I haven’t been making schedules or studying tourist guides – just letting it unfold – and it was a very worthwhile afternoon.
Joseph waited for an hour outside the hotel whilst I took a shower to freshen up. Out of curiosity, I tried to find the ferry terminal before going back to the hotel, but I was accosted in pidgin English by ‘enthusiastic’ locals as soon as I was around the 1st corner – turned out they were trying to persuade me to jump in their small rowing boat and be taken across for a very modest fee, thus avoiding the inconvenience of finding the ferry.
I could feel the pavement getting smaller and the desperation to earn some extra rupees was obvious, but you just can’t help everyone, so I did a U-turn and decided to honour the agreement with Joseph . . .