Choose a luxury hotel in Fort Cochin with Small Luxury Hotels of the World and follow an exotic spice trail to Kerala’s tropical Malabar Coast. You can admire bright Hindu murals in 17th-century raja’s palaces and applaud leisurely cricket games on palm-shaded village greens.
Luxury things to do in Fort Cochin
As your luxury, bamboo-thatched houseboat glides past paddy fields and villages, your private guide points out kingfishers and bathing water buffalo on the backwaters. Watch Arabian Sea sunsets over Cochin’s rickety cheena vala fishing nets as you pass on your way to hypnotic Kathakali storytelling dance performances. A stroll around the elegant, colonial enclave of Fort Cochin will take you past Vasco da Gama’s 16th-century balconied residence and waterfront merchants’ villas with carved wooden doorways.
Luxury shopping in Fort Cochin
Curry connoisseurs take home sachets of aromatic saffron, cardamom and tamarind from traditional spice traders in Mattancherry. Browse in luxury handicraft shops in quaint Jew Town for Indian curios like ornamental hookah pipes and rosewood-carved animal sculptures. To spend your rupees at sparkling gemstone boutiques and silk dealers, ask your driver to drop you off on the cosmopolitan Mahatma Gandhi Road.
Gourmet Fort Cochin
Keralan haute cuisine like ocean-fresh neymeen kingfish molee curry and spicy konchu prawn masala is served at elegant seafood brasseries around Fort Cochin. Feast like a maharaja on local thali dishes of sambar vegetable chowder, yoghurty coconut curry and piles of crispy appam bread at courtyard restaurants in front of Chinese fishing nets.
Book a luxury hotel in Fort Cochin with Small Luxury Hotels of the World and holiday in colonial grandeur in laid-back southern India. Take high tea on the veranda overlooking manicured tropical gardens in a boutique, old-style Dutch traders’ mansion.