Kanyakumari

 The town famous for being southern most end of India. And for a place where you can see three seas merge- Indian Ocean, Arabic sea and Bay of Bengal.

The most famous attraction here is Vivekananda memorial. Which is situated sound 400 m inside the ocean. The ferry ride to this will have mile long queue But pay 159  extra and the special entry queue is almost non existent. 

The memorial has a building on top of a huge rock. Inside the building which is beautiful and very well maintained, there is statue of Vivekananda. Apparently he meditated there in 1892. 

There is also another building here, which houses the pada of Parvati. The natural foot shaped rock is said to be the place where Parvati prayed. 

Be prepared to stand in a very long line for the return ferry ride. 

The famous Kanyakumari temple is close to the rock memorial. The nose ring of the goddess which is said to light up the ships in the sea - I could not see it. The priest was blocking the idol when we finally went near the sanctum.

There is also Ramayana Darshan exhibition. It depicts entire epic with paintings. I personally did not feel that faces and expressions are very good. But the concept is nice.

And the BharatMata statue, Anant shayana and other statues are beautiful. And the exterior garden is beautiful with rock sculptures - of different incarnations of Vishnu, different sages etc. And there are sculptures of birds and animals. 

BharatMata 

 in the first floor there are idols of Bharatamata, Vivekananda, Anantashayana. I liked these better than the Ramayana paintings.

And of course sun rise and sun set points. Yet another crowd puller. A large crowd accumulates there at sunset - armed with their mobile, to store this beautiful event.

My husband mentioned that for a tourist town, the place is quite clean. I totally agree. And the prices are not exorbitant. And most places will be walk-able from your hotel. 

My doubt second morning was sun doesn’t rise from ocean. He emerged from clouds but much above the horizon. Why?

And I am sorry about other people in the photo. This is India and there are people wherever you go.

Let us move on and start another journey of about 14 kms to the north to a town called Suchindram. Which has a unique temple called Thanumalayan temple ,of all three gods Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar in one idol. The temple was built in 8th century AD. Probably by chola king RajaRaja. 

The temple is large with hundreds of carved stone pillars and many idols.There is a Hanuman idol which is  22  feet and today was decorated with butter and adorned with very lengthy Tulasi malas.

The tower of the temple is 134 feet tall. Wow! This temple visit made my day for a semi-atheist me.

If you want to know the history of the temple, my advice is try to hire a guide as there are no descriptions in languages other than Tamil. 

Why and how did the kings of yester-years build such enormous temples? Devotion or desire to be immortal ? 

Another conclusion of mine was our ancestors were stronger and healthier as they labored physically every day and on their cheat days they worked harder by going to the temples and climbing millions of steps there.

Another digression - my great grand parents or their generations walked to Kashi, all 2000 kms. We get a heart attack hearing about that idea!