“Everything is for sale in your room and in the hotel,” says George, Manager of the Ginger House Museum Hotel. “If you like the bed we can ship it back to England for you.”

For two centuries, until 1990, this was the site of a Mattancherry ginger warehouse. Then it found another life as part of the Ginger House Museum Hotel complex which includes 80,000 square feet of an antiques emporium and a restaurant too.

Though George exaggerates. The 142 year old, 100 foot long snake boat, displayed in the antiques emporium, isn’t for sale. For hotel owner Majnu, it is an essential symbol of the Heritage Museum and of Kerala culture. Nor is the cannon on the lawn, worryingly pointing at my suite’s window, for sale either. Selling such weapons is too bureaucratically complex.

Currently, the unique Ginger House is a boutique

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