Kanyakumari

Date arrived: 15th January  2024

Date Departed: 17th January 2024 

Favourite sight: Swami Vivekenanda - Wandering Monk exhibition

Average Cost: £26.38 PPPD

At the southern tip of India lies Kanyakumari, a small town with a bit of a sea-side feel, and a mass of Pilgrims visiting to see the point where three oceans meet, and visit the shrine to Swami Vivekananda, an itinerant Swami of some note.

15th January 2024

We arrived into Kanyakumari railway station half an hour ahead of schedule (not bad for a train that had travelled nearly 38 hours from its origin) on a hot day, and disembarked with a lot of pilgrims, making for a very crowded platform. The town isn't very big, so it was less than a kilometre to walk to our accommodation, just off the coast.

As we made our way into the busy hotel lobby, we spotted a British couple who we'd seen on the train (and admired their packing restraint), so got chatting to them as we waited to check in. It turned out they were based in an AirBnB in Trivandrum for six weeks, and this was their first of several planned trips to explore a bit further afield. I felt less bad about their super-small suit cases, knowing they only had three days of kit in them! Having arranged to meet Peter and Julie later for dinner, we checked in, and set out to explore Kanyakumari.

First on the agenda was visiting the official most southerly mainland point in India. This is marked with an incongruous concrete tower, that looks as if it's borrowed its architecture from a 1960s multi-storey car park but scaled down. As it cost a mighty 10 Rupees (10p) to ascend, however, we felt it was worth the fee to look over the joining of the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal.

The whole area here is very seaside resorty, with lots of food stalls and traders selling everything from fridge magnets to luggage. A surprising amount of luggage actually! From the top of the concrete tower we had a god view over the two small islands that sit immediately off Kanyakamuri, which can be reached from the mainland by ferry. If you look at the top of this page you can see a picture of the Thiruvalluvar Statue (on the right) and on the island behind it, the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and meditation hall.

The former is a 133 feet tall statue built to honour the 133 chapters of the Tamil poet Thiruvallavar's Thirukaral - an epic poem. It is a modern construction, built in the year 2000 by more than 5000 sculptors.

In the island behind it is a memorial to Swami Vivekananda. Having undertaken to travel the length of India as a penniless swami, Vivekananda reached Kanyakamuri in December of 1897 and decided to swim out to the island, where he meditated on the state ot the nation for two days, before swimming back. This is where the majority of the pilgrims seemed to be heading, and looked pretty busy - although we didn't brave the boats to find out.

Walking back up through town in search of a lassi, we stumbled on the Wandering Monk exhibition dedicated to Vivekananda, and spent a really infromative 45 minutes in there reading about his life and travels. It was interesting to hear of a penniless holy man who set out on his travels, yet managed to garner enough interest in his views that he spent his nights at the tables of Mahorajahs and Princes, even going so far as to visit the United States. He must have been an increible character to talk to.

We met up with Peter and Julie for a drink at 5PM (very early for us) and betwen us managed to find a bar, which kept us talking for a good couple of hours ahead of dinner. We very much enjoyed their company, and swapping travel tips!

16th January

This morning we took a bit of a wander around the town, visiting the rock pier, and also a French bakery where we bought some baked supplies ahead of our afternoon's road trip.

In the afternoon we wanted to visit the Padmanubhapuram Palace in nearby Thuckalay, and it was either an expensive taxi, or a 90 minute bus ride. We opted for the bus, which all went well, and in fact we somehow managed to get dropped off right outside the gates to the palace.

The palace itself was interesting, and architecturally amazing, but the format of the visit wasn't ideal. Effectively you were in a long queue walking through a set path around various different buildings, with little information on the history or uses of them. Fascinating to see the beautiful buildings, but quite prescriptive and uninformative.

After a cup of chai in a local tea shop, we walked back to Thuckalay bus station and caught the bus back to Kanyakumari. We were less lucky with this bus, and ended up standing for about half of the trip. Once again, the open air style of the typical non-AC busses worked pretty well for cooling and air-flow.

As we set out to get some food, we managed to bump into Peter and Julie once more, and had a good chat about our days activities. We definitely had to get an early night, though, as we had a taxi booked to take us to the nearby town of Nagercoil at 5AM the next day!

17th January

When your alarm starts with a 4, that's never a good sign! Fortunately we were all packed and ready to go, so just needed to throw on clothes and head downstairs to check out and meet the taxi driver at 5AM, for our 45 minute drive to Nagercoil. From here we were catching a 6.15AM train up to Madurai, en-route to the East-coast enclave of Puducherry. It took us a few minutes to find the train, but we did so eventually, and managed to settle in to our narrow side-berths.