My southern love, Kochi

Four-foot dosas make my lips smack. So do hundreds of piles of ginger drying in the sun. Put those in the capital city of arguably the cleanest state in India, and my inner tourist says, “ZING!”

Welcome to Kochi, the first large Indian city that I didn’t find overwhelming. (I call the Golden Triangle—an ever-popular tourist route through Delhi, Agra and Jaipur—the Oppressive Indian Cities Triangle.) In south India’s Kochi, there are garbage cans on the sidewalks, parks with vibrant foliage, and fresh coats of pastel-colored paint on buildings. There also seem to be more stray goats than stray dogs. And the goats, incidentally, help keep the city clean by snacking on old posters and discarded paper products. (Who knew that animals like to chow down on paper fiber? Cows do it here, too.)

The environment in Kochi is so chill that groups of police sit around drinking chai all day. Well, I guess police do that everywhere in India.

I tried eating the whole thing. Fail. Maybe I shouldn't have ordered eggs, too.

Check out that cute goat. She's looking at me but thinking about those yummy paper products behind her.

Oh, Indian police. If they're not taking bribes, they're sipping chai.

An auto-rickshaw driver passes by the door of a Catholic church in Kochi.

At a spice processing facility, men carried dozens of piles of ginger, recently dried in the sun, indoors.

Afterwards, the ginger crew swept the courtyard.