South India 2008

Photos by Adam Jones

These photos were taken during two-and-a-half months in South India
(states of Karnataka, Goa, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala) from June to August 2008.

Gallery 5: Kochi (Cochin)

I.

A trio of Kochi's finest pose for the camera, Fort Cochin.

II.

Typical Dutch colonial architecture in Fort Cochin.

III.

Women gardeners outside the Church of St. Francis.

IV.

Inside the Church of St. Francis, the first church constructed by the
Europeans in India. The Portuguese built it early in the sixteenth century; when the
Dutch seized control, they converted it to a Protestant church. It was the burial site
of famed Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, before his body was disinterred and returned to Portugal.
"One hangover from British days is the continued use of punkahs, large swinging cloth fans on frames
suspended above the congregation, operated by a punkah-wallah" (The Rough Guide to South India).

V.

The Dutch cemetery in Fort Cochin.

VI.

The Old Courtyard hotel in Fort Cochin, a seventeenth-century edifice
built by the Portuguese.

VII.

VIII.

A woman makes chapatis by hand in a streetside stall.

IX.

Cochin was once home to a sizable Jewish population, but most of them picked up
and moved to Israel after independence; today there are fewer than twenty Jews left in the colony.

X.

Moldering colonial buildings along a Fort Cochin street.

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