Around the World

Continued from http://allyouwannaknow.net/aroundtheworld/2009/06/28/trip-to-kovalam-%e2%80%93-part-3/

We had gatered lot of details about Kanyakumari and places to visit from the internet. some of the useful links are http://www.kanyakumari.com/vivekananda.html
http://www.kanyakumari.com/

We reached Kanyakumari by 1:30 and went straight to the steamer place which would take us to the Vivekananda rock. We were charged 10Rs for parking and 20Rs eac for the steamer boat. We waited in a queue (which had seating arrangements) to get into the steamer……as we waited we were listening to bharathiyar songs being played at the place…..odi vilayadu papa….
The steamer was huge and we saw it come loaded with people. We thought to ourselves that we must get the window seat if we wanted to take any snaps.
Our batch seemed to have less people luckily. So we dint have to fight for the window seat. We took umpty number of pictures of the Tiruvalluvar statue and the Vivekanada temple from the boat….we also got lots of shots of the black clouds…the waves….it was great…

We got down at the rock and got entry tickets. There were 2 temples …one at the bottom, which I think was Vivekananda’s Samadhi (was it??…..not sure really) and on top was a hall which had a nice big statue of Vivekananda.
There was a person here eager to tell us the story (which we hardly understood)…he also pointed out to some nice architecture done on the pillars (which we would have missed if not for him). He also told us that when the tsunami occurred recently….all the people who were inside this hall were saved. Although the waves were higher and hence covered the Thiruvalluvar statue, the people in this hall were saved….if that is true….it is really great.
He told us about the sun dial and all that…so we gave him some money and he went away happily.

Behind the hall was a sun dial and a sunrise calendar. And then there was the sea……it was a great view….we took a lot of snaps there.
I had to attend to nature’s call and found a restroom…..it was extremely clean…. I was surprised.

Then we went back and waited for the steamer to take us back. The Thiruvalluvar statue was closed for some reason….so the steamer took us directly back to the Indian main land.

After this we went for lunch with the driver to hotel Saravana and had meals. The temple was supposed to open only at 4:00 PM. We decided to wait. We went to the beach which was really a tiny place. That was the actual tip of India. We could see the waves coming in different directions….this was the point where the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and the Arabian sea were meeting…
Of course….to be truthful…. I could not make out the difference in the water colour. Supposedly you can make out 3 distinct colours of water and mud…..we dint find both. Amma had asked me to get the mud from Kanyakumari as it is supposed to be smooth and shining…. I dint find any such mud. I anyway filled one paper cone with some mud that I found as a sample. We played in the beach fro sometime and then went around the shops. We then waited in a park….
Finally the temple opened at 4:05PM. Here also men were not allowed with shirts. Also, we had to deposit our cameras before getting into the temple.
We quickly covered the temple.
The goddess here is said to have such a bright nice ring that it could light up the whole place. I did see the bright nose ring…..but the temple was still kind of dark….donno why the ring is not lighting up the place these days….or maybe I have heard something wrong.

What we missed was the Padmanabha swamy temple….we have to wear saree and veshti to go to this temple. This is a rule. I did not have a saree.
Later we got to know that we could rent a mundu for 5Rs and wear it on top of the dress that we are already wearing. This would give us permission to enter into the temple. However …we cant do anything now

That was the end of our trip. We got back into the car and went back to Kovalam. We were a little sticky from the beach sand. So we had a bath….then went for dinner…and then booked our trip for the next day at the reception….next day was at Varkala beach which was about 61Kms from Kovalam.

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