This weekend I headed down to the Southern tip of
India, and a town called Kanyakumari. Here three oceans meet: the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea
and the Bay of Bengal. It’s also known for its beautiful sunsets and sunrises.
Of course half the fun of getting there was the bus –
this time, on my own! It took about 5 hours on the way down, including one
change. The scenery was beautiful; there’s a huge mountain range called the
Western Ghats, which divides the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and you
follow this South all the way to the ocean. Unfortunately there were windows on
this bus (!) and they didn’t open, so it was pretty hot. I kept falling asleep
and then felt completely dazed when I finally got off the bus.
Kanyakumari sounded so beautiful in the descriptions
and I was imagining it to be a bit like Kerala…. so perhaps I’d set my hopes a
little high! In the end I didn’t warm to it much at all. It was absolutely
packed with tourists (Indian tourists of course, not foreigners) and although
it was nice to see the ocean, there were coaches parked top to tail the whole
way along the sea front and people constantly following me around trying to
sell plastic tat. Also it was cloudy, so there wasn't much of a sunset in the end.
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| Early evening at the very bottom of India... |
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| Small islets with memorials to the spiritual teacher Swami Vivekananda and the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar |
I did get up at 5am the next morning to see the
sunrise. Well, actually I was woken at 4:45am by chanting and music being
broadcast from the church nearby. It might have been pleasant except for the
high-volume crackling and interference on the speakers…not the most gentle way
to be woken up! The sunrise was nice, but I had a bit of a headache and needed
a few more hours sleep afterwards to try to shake off the grumpy mood!
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| It's a new dawn, it's a new day... |
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| Early morning on the sea front |
There was also a temple here and a Gandhi memorial,
but neither made much of an impression. At each place I visited it felt like the people were out to rip me off. Of course people try it on all the time in India, but usually in a cheeky but good-natured way. Here it felt like they were deliberately trying to trick more money out of me and I wasn't in the mood for it!
It's hard to stay grumpy for long in India, though. Standing with the locals drinking a nice hot chai and a cheery waiter bringing me my breakfast dosa, were enough to put a smile back on my face.
Still, I was pleased to get back on the bus. It sounds crazy to say that I now look forward
to a 6-hour bus journey, but it’s true. There’s always something new to look at
out of the window, so it never gets boring and you don’t even notice the time.
When I arrived back in Tirumangalam 6 hours later and
took an auto-rickshaw back to the Boys Town, there was the most beautiful
sunset waiting for me! I'm sure there's an analogy to be made here about travelling far
and wide in search of beauty or meaning and then finding it right on your doorstep!
But I’m not quite poetic enough to write it ;-)
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| Sunset back at the BTS guesthouse |
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