Kanyakumari
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2007
1
23
31
Trip End
Jul 25, 2007
Kanyakumari, India
Saturday, July 7, 2007
We awoke the next morning at dawn to see the sunrise. Kanyakumari means 'Lands End' and the town is located at the very soutehrn tip of the Indian subcontinent. Locals describe it as the place where the three oceans meet, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. As we left the hotel that morning we were uncertain as to weather or not we would get a good sunrise because of all the cloudy days we've seen recently (it is, after all, monsoon season), but our doubts ended up being unjustified. Just after 6 am the sun broke thorugh beautifully.
Though we did not realize it, Kanyakumari was affected by the 2004 tsunami. There is no visible damage, but apparently the fish market was destroyed by the waves. It seems a new one is under construction, but progress seems to be moving rather slowly.
After a short nap and a big breakfast, we went to the Gandhi memorial where his ashes were kept before being scattered in the ocean. Located on the water, along with everything else in town, the building is an interesting fusion of Hindu temple and memorial sight. It's basically a temple built to honor the man. We stood on the roof of the temple and enjoyed the sights for a while and noticed that there was a man standing to our side that had been following us. We decided to lose him by going down one stairwell and coming back up to the roof using a different set of stairs. It worked and, of course, we were very proud of ourselves for being so clever.
After visiting the memorial we toured the town's major temples and walked for a while along the beach, climbing to the top of the look-out tower in the process.
