Kanyakumari Diary

Too short it was, only of two days. Yeah, now I don't know why we didn't make it at least a 3-day affair. So like typical tourists, we crammed a lot of places in those two days and came back with mixed feelings of happiness and dissatisfaction. What would've I done if I had stayed there for two more days? I would've had a daylong drive around Kanyakumari - beautiful all around, except near the monuments - sparkling water bodies, rocky mountains giving you company almost everywhere, green paddy fields, coconut trees...reminding you of some place or the other back home but summed up in one place. I would've sat in the cool surroundings of Padmanabhapuram Palace, so unlike Mysore Palace and so much like a big country home you wish you owned. I would've stayed longer on the Rock Memorial and hopefully overcome that unknown fear that was at the back of my mind - I couldn't define it but it didn't really let me enjoy the place in peace and it seemed to have afflicted only me.

Smoking Tower!

Lonely Beach

3D Jump!

At Sunset Point

Waking up to Kanyakumari

The Palace Sun

I was somehow expecting much more people than what I saw. What I saw was mostly Bengalis(or Odiyas; I can't yet differentiate the two) at Kanyakumari and MalayaLis at the palace. I saw a couple of young foreigners at the Sunset Point and they were quite obliging to the local youth requesting a photograph with them. Food was just average on the first day; even the usually safe idli was under-cooked, even looked so on the posters pasted on the walls of the hotel. The guy at our hotel confirmed it - there was nothing called the best vegetarian hotel in Kanyakumari. 

Sanguthurai Beach was beautiful and looked lonely. I guess we were just early and felt immediately at home. While we frolicked, Pappa found that Kumar, our driver and guide, had worked in MRPL for a year and it felt like a new bond between them. 

I had forgotten that we were crossing over to the new year until woken up at midnight by the sound of crackers and some loud cheers - not loud enough to wake anybody else in the room it seems!

At the Wax Museum, I ignored Gandhiji, Obama and Johnny Depp(!!) and placed myself between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, quite uncharacteristically one might say. But I actually prefer Die Hard BW to the Pirate JD, so there was no choice really. 

Some of the beautiful rocky hills around are shrinking I guess. I saw one face of a hill badly chipped off, may be for granite. These hills are very inviting, even for someone like me, who trekked last may be almost a century ago. They seem to add an extra grandeur to all the places - the restaurant or the palace. 

Sunset Point was crowded with people, especially at the western edges. If you by chance happened to take your eyes off the sun basking in all the attention, you could see flashes and flashes of mobile cameras all around, with their backs to the imposing statue of ThiruvaLLuvar.