One thing I knew about Tirunelveli is that its about 2 hours from Kanyakumari, India's southern most tip. More importantly I had promised both my mom and my mother-in-law that I would take them there and things never worked out during their lives. So I was really keen to go there on their behalf and on mine. Jyo was a ready partner in the adventure and we decided to do a sunrise visit.
Now, we had checked into RR Inn at Tirunelveli which was a semi-decent hotel but the staff was super helpful - Madan, Sanju and co. We asked Madan to organise a carfor us at 4 in the morning so we could be there by 530 am and watch the sunrise. Chances of clouds playing spoilsport were very much there but least we could do was show up. So we went- me and Jyo - and a garrulous taxi driver whose name I now fail to recall. The road to Kanyakumari was superb. One stop for chai and we were in Kanyakumari by 530 or so.
Most of the action there is towards the southern part - the sunrise point, the Bhagawati Amman temple, the Vivekananda Rock, the Thiruvalluvar statue, the sangam of the three seas, the sunset point etc - all within a km. Jyo and i hurried in the dark past a massive, well lit church, towards the sunset point. There was a pathway made of rocks -more like a breakwater which was fully occupied by people getting closer to the sunrise for a better view.
Jyo loves to walk and so did I and we walked the distance to the tip and took pics and the skies lit up (reminded me of the scene I described in If You Love Someone). All kinds of people, all ages scrambled there. One lady struck up a conversation with Jyo about health awareness and informed us that she has a villa in Hyderabad.
The sunrise was the most beautiful I ever saw - the sun rising out of the sea. It was surreal.
Anyway we headed back to the main area and went to the temple which they said required us to take off our shirts. Now I had no qualms about taking the short off but something in the way he said it put me off and I decided not to go in. We went to the Saravana Bhavan and ate some insipid idlis and left rather disappointed. From there we headed to the ferry that would take us to the Vivekananda Rock - the Poompuhar Shipping Corporation. The first one leaves at 8 or so and there was a special 300 buck ticket and a normal ticket. We chose the 300 buck one and got on to the boat.
The Vivekananda Rock had a meditation place where we sat and meditated for a while. There was a statue and some nice places to view the new massive Thiruvalluvar statue. After half an hour we took a boat back and came back to land. We walked around behind the Bhagawati Amman temple and went to the place where all three seas meet. Many people were there praying, wetting their feet and so on. There were a lot of travellers from North India, Rajasthan in particular. Vendors sold pineapple, mango, corn and stuff. One photographer took our pic for 200 bucks - a terrible pic!
Kanyakumari!
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