Kanyakumari-palooza

Armed with a nice, clean hotel room, a new friend, and the peace that comes from not being gawked at 24/7, I began to unwind thoroughly in Kanyakumari. I took in sunrises and sunsets that broke my heart to look at them and spent entire afternoons people-watching and soaking up the sea air on the steps of the waterfront. One thing about Kanyakumari that was striking was how safe it felt. The lack of hassle meant that I was comfortable walking around after sundown and late into the night frequently, just to absorb the beachy night breeze and watch young men playing football on the promenade. It reminded me a lot of Luxor, and the temple at night where we’d go and eat falafel with the women sitting out by the mosque while the men prayed and the boys played football. Very mellow, and very me. My second day in Kanyakumari, I bumped into Vikram again and we got to talking for several hours. With my new friend guiding the way, I got to discover some unbelievable sprawling beaches just outside the town-- bigger than the teeny spit that passes for a beach in Kanyakumari proper-- and ride on a motorcycle - SO exhilarating-- see a 1500-year-old Hindu temple that defies description (and prohibits photography-- I was obviously crushed)-- and visit an ancient fort site from the 18^th century. My trusty Rough Guide all but wrote-off Kanyakumari, giving it only a page and a half, mostly practical details and hardly any tourism info on sites like these. I was only too happy to be able to explore the area with a local I could trust since I never would have been made aware of any of these sites without him.

Sidenote: I’m disappointed in you, Rough Guide, if I’d listened to you I would have all but skipped right over Kanyakumari!! I shake my fist!

One thing that the guidebook did recommend checking out was the two rocks set out from the shore-- one hosting an ashram where a famous swami meditated sometime around the turn of the century, and the other a memorial to a celebrated Tamil poet. I boarded the ferry to the ashram to sit and meditate for a while and then exited out to the terraced courtyard surrounding it. The meditation room, if not Kanyakumari itself, seemed to reset my travel-clock, erasing the earlier rough times and filling me with calm and hope for the rest of the 2-month trip. I didn’t realize just how tense I’d gotten till I had the chance to let it go and shut the hell up for a few minutes. Meditation might just have a new convert.

Another stroke of good luck, or karma, that found me in Kanyakumari was the fact that the annual festival of the local goddess, Kanya Devi, was going on while I was in town. This meant that for either 9 or 10 days pilgrims were flooding the town, and the temple, and many rituals were being enacted, much to my delight. Each morning began with chanting and a procession of the temple elephant from his pen or enclosure or whatever down the main strip into the temple. Then, each night there was a live music performance right outside my hotel and very lively evening crowds making their way into the temple until about 8pm. Finally, on the the last day of the festival, a grand parade procession took to the street and made it's way from the temple, up the main drag and through the town, taking with it elephants, elaborately-costumed-dancers, drummers, trumpeters, and-- the main event-- the idol of the goddess Kanya Devi. Though I had a prime aerial view from my hotel room, I chose to watch from up-close downstairs as each new performer made their way past. When the time came for the goddess' idol to pass, things turned almost violent in that the onlookers threw enormous volumes of flowers and garlands-- offerings to the goddess-- at the idol and the man carrying it. Having never seen this kind of thing before, my first instinct was that the mob had turned on things, but then Vikram explained that it was a show of devotion and worship, not violence. Either way, it defied words. All that was left after the procession was the fading sound of the horn players and drummers, and massive amounts of flowers on the road.

Anyway, the area was magical and each day was bookended by the absolute wonder and beauty of the sunrise and sunset that took on a mythical feeling. I was sad to finally leave for Madurai but, as the old adage goes: all good things must come to an end. Tear...

On top of the world at the bottom of the subcontinent

Originally, when planning my next move from Cochin, I tried to find a room in Kanyakumari and was dismayed to find out that whatever places weren’t outright full were charging about RS600, RS700, or even upwards of RS1200 per night for a simple single room! Now, in reality, RS600 is only about $12, a steal for any hotel room. But when traveling for 2 months, those charges do add up and my budget only allowed for RS1000 per day for all expenses. So I made the decision to simply take the train to Kanyakumari, walk around, watch a sunset, and then get a bus or a train onwards to Madurai where I had managed to find a room for RS300. All that changed once I spent about 10 minutes in Kanyakumari. The air and the weather and the people all combined to make it a most hospitable environment. Absolutely everything about Kanyakumari enthralled me and I instantly regretted making a hotel reservation in Madurai and wished I could spend more time in this amazing new place. Then it dawned on me-- who says I can’t stay? I decided then and there that I would stay longer, and went to work looking for a hotel that might have rooms available. Just because the hotels in my guidebook were all full up and pricey, didn’t mean that everywhere would be packed, so I left my bags at a left-luggage shack and took a walk down the main drag of the town that leads to the temple and the waterfront to have a look.

Within about 5 minutes I had rustled up a room for the phenomenal rate of RS150!! I was elated and went and got my bags back, deposited them in my room, had a quick shower, and then went out to soak up life in Kanyakumari. By this point it was about 3:30 or 4:00 and sunset was fast approaching at 6, so I headed down to the waterfront to see what was going on there and stake out a good spot for sunset.

The best way I can describe Kanykumari’s waterfront is to refer to the Verona Beach setting of Baz Lurhman’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ film. With stone steps leading into the sea at some points and grand facades and archways along the promenade, it was a beautiful sight to behold. Chock full of seashell stalls and little ice cream, roasted nut, and popcorn hawkers, the place had a laid back hippie feel to it. In fact, I’m a bit surprised that the hippies hit up Goa when Kanyakumari was available back in the 70s. I sat and enjoyed the atmosphere on the steps by the water for a while and then headed onwards to the tiny spit of sand that makes up the ‘beach’ in Kanyakumari. Within the town, this is the beach, but just outside of town there are miles upon miles of untouched gorgeous sandy beaches, I suppose that the one close at hand is popular just because there’s no need to leave town to get to it. So it’s always packed full of bathers. The boys and men jump in either in their pants, or just their underwear while the women only seem to wade in to their ankles or knees and do so fully dressed in their saris. I saw one family with two daughters who had bathing suits on. One. During an entire week. I guess bathing suits aren’t popular among the more traditional slices of Indian society even though seeing men stripped down to their tighty whities is perfectly ok.

Anyway, it was at this point, when I got to the beach to watch sunset, that I met one of the two people that would go on to change my trip as I knew it. Anna was sitting on the beach when I chatted her up and found out that she’s from Spain and has been volunteering in Andhra Pradesh for the last 2 months. We talked for hours and exchanged experiences of our travels and she gave me a great deal of hope to endure the occasional bad days just hearing the great times that she’s had and the touching moments she’s experienced here. The sunset was beyond beautiful, I can’t even describe it properly. The sun was huge and bright red and the sky stayed a mesmerizing shade of pink for a long time after the sun had set. It was truly magical. We kept chatting and chatting and eventually got hungry so we ventured out into the evening to find a restaurant. Both of us had been kept to a veg diet in our respective host situations so we went searching for some non-veg goodness. Enter Vikram. We met Vikram while we hunted for a restaurant that served meat. He was standing outside of his restaurant and saw us looking a bit lost and came to help. Unlike so many other profit-seeking locals I’ve encountered, Vikram was selflessly helpful. We told him what we were looking for and he obliged us with some recommendations that wound up leading us away from his (veg) restaurant. Very honest and a refreshing change from the usual “come-into-my-shop, I-give-you-good-price, hello-madam-come-have-a-look, or the old reliable are-you-from-america/england?. We had a lovely dinner and I was invited to come visit Spain once I get back from India (and I’m trying my damnedest to figure out a way to do it, too!). And then we said our goodbyes as Anna was leaving the next morning for Cochin and we headed off to our respective hotels.

Then, disaster. I got up to my room and sat down to go through my bag and prepare/organize for the next day. Then I began to itch. All along the bottoms of my legs I was suddenly very itchy and no amount of scratching relieved it. I couldn't understand what had happened. I hadn't been itchy the whole night. Kanyakumari had been a welcome relief from the mosquitoes that were abundant in Cochin. I guess the wind is a bit cruel to them there so there aren’t as many. Anyway, I was jumping out of my skin and scratching like mad when it dawned on me that the only surfaces that were bothering me were those in contact with the bed. And so I got up and took a closer look. There, coming out of the mattress itself were hundreds of tiny, almost microscopic ants all over the place. Eeew. It wasn’t even that there were a few stray ants marching around on top of the mattress, I had encountered that almost everywhere along the way in my travels, and it was fine. But these were emerging from the mattress itself. Gross. I marched downstairs, put on my sternest angry-Persian-girl face and roused the night watch guy. I said ‘There are ants in my bed’. He didn’t seemed to get it, so I tried again, ‘there are bugs, in the bed, all over!’. He smiled and nodded. Still didn’t get it. So I tried one last time, and gestured little creepy crawly tsk-tsk-tsk noises and made a ‘bed’ gesture. He finally got it. So he grabs another key and takes me to another room. It’s a double room on another floor, so I’m thinking ‘maybe this could work’. The bed looks impeccably clean and I sit down to disturb any would-be ants within, with no emerging ant response. So I’m about to say yes when I remember to check the bathroom to make sure it’s got a western toilet (I’m just not built for the squat toilets, fat girls with surgery-ed bum knees are just improperly prepared for that experience). I go into the bathroom and find the largest cockroach I’ve ever seen in my life. This thing was about 3 inches long, at least. It looked like it could eat me in my sleep. Like Men in Black were understating things. Like it could dispose of small animals in the wild. Holy fuck. I said ‘no, I can’t take this room’. He said they didn't have any others and that this was all I had to choose from. I said ‘Hell no” and dashed down the steps to go see Anna at her hotel. Luckily she had shown me where she was staying and I was able to go up to her room and tell her what had happened. I wound up staying with her that night and moving all of my things down the street like a maniac at 11:30 at night while sleepy-eyed locals watched me. Anna’s hotel charged me to stay, but luckily I got most of my money back from the first hotel and so things evened out in the end. I wound up taking over Anna’s room once she checked out and stayed another night. Crisis averted.

More on Kanyakumari next time!

The end of the line, and the end of the subcontinent

When we last left off I was leaving Cochin in Kerala for Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu after a most off-putting three days spent being gawked at and chased and harassed. The only train that would take me to Kanyakumari left at 4:30AM from Cochin and so I made a reservation and rose at 2:30, got into a cab and dashed to the train station in the dead of night. The train was late in arriving, and even later in departing. The ticket I held in my hand said I would be seated in the 2^nd class sleeper section in a seat in Coach 20. So once the train pulled in I began walking the length of the train to find Coach 20. Coach fourteen, fifteen, sixteen….. seventeen….. eight--- wait, no coach eighteen, no nineteen, and certainly no twenty. WTF. So I get onto coach 17 and try to find someone to help me. Most people were asleep and those that were awake didn’t speak English. I finally find a kind-looking woman and make some gestures to indicate “Am I in the right place?” and show her my seat details. She strings together a sentence in English that basically said “This is the ladies’ carriage, and there’s no assigned seating. Sit anywhere.” So I resign myself to coach 17 and find an open seat. The train is organized in a sort of lopsided dual-sided bench scheme with long padded benches on one side of the aisle and single seats on the other side of the aisle. I find an open single seat across from some nuns and exhale thoroughly. Then I hear the skittering noise of insects and look around to find the carriage absolutely crawling with cockroaches. Small ones, medium ones, and, to my horror, a few big ones…. Oh. My. God.

At this point, the experience of the last 2 days and the train-seating fiasco all became overwhelming and I simply hugged my backpack toward me, obstructed my face, and broke down into silent tears. Luckily, most of the other passengers were asleep, and those that weren’t apparently thought I was just sleeping against my bag and I had one final shred of dignity left as I wept into my backpack.

I cried because of the seat mix-up. Because somewhere in the make-believe world of Indian Railways was my sleeper berth, waiting for me to curl up onto it and snooze away the 8 hour train ride. I cried because I missed home. Because I hate cockroaches. Because the seat I was in was near to the bathroom, that stunk (I never got the nerve to go and look in there, and was just grateful to God that I didn’t feel the urge to use the facilities the entire time I was on the train). I cried because I was ashamed of myself for having broken down. I was disappointed in my traveler hardiness. I thought I was made of more than that. I cried because I was in pain, the ‘padded’ benches were murder on the tailbone and back and so I was constantly trying to smooth out the eternal knots in my back. I cried because I was alone on a train in a strange country and didn’t know what lay ahead. The low point was upon me.

I managed only a few fleeting minutes of sleep here and there throughout the entire train ride. Between children crying, the train stopping and starting, and the infernal cockroaches, I couldn’t rest. Once day broke, however, some gorgeous sceneries presented themselves before me and I snapped photos of the Kerala and Tamil Nadu countrysides that could easily be from a tourism brochure. Mountains, rivers, palms, banana trees, and little villages abounded.

Finally, after the longest 8 hours of my life, the train pulled into Kanyakumari station. The end of the line, and the end of the subcontinent.

Everything changed for me at that point. I got off the train into a whole different world. The wind was cool and powerful coming off the water. The sun was brilliant and dazzling but not scorching. And the people…. the people didn't pay me hardly any attention! It was freeing to blend into the flow of things. Kanyakumari is a popular Indian tourist destination, but for some reason not many western tourists make it down there. I saw about 10 in total during my entire week there. Personally, I don’t get it-- when I was planning my trip to India, I knew that I had to go see Kanyakumari, it was just as essential as seeing the Taj Mahal or the Gateway of India. But it is a trek and I suppose not too many tourists make the effort to get there. For those that do, however, the reward is the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets conceivable and an otherworldly ocean breeze from the 3 converging bodies of water that make up Kanyakumari’s coastline: the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea. Heaven.

Kanyakumari was, and still is, my favourite part of India, and quite possibly one of my favourite places in the world.

Tales from Kanyakumari next time!

Sex and the Subcontinent

In a very Carrie-Bradshaw-esque turn of events, I’m sitting in a cafe in Mumbai’s High Street Phoenix complex (basically a really big open air shopping mall with a bunch of western brand shops and a McDonalds at the center; I may or not be considering eating there for lunch-- it would be nice to have something familiar, you know?) updating ye olde blog and being one of those laptop-coffee-shop types.

Anyway, it’s a lovely cafe, serving cakes and smoothies. I got a mango slushie and a ginormous slice of pineapple cream cake for RS158…. About $3. I love this country! They’ve even got wifi here! They’re playing Aqua-- yes, as in ‘Barbie Girl’ and they’ve got a guitar sitting in the corner of the cafe under a sign that says ‘play me’. I gotta say, Indian cafes are kinda growing on me. I have yet to see a single Starbucks or Second Cup with guitars for the clientele to fool around on. Take notes North America! Whatever time I spent off the beaten path is now being rewarded with creature comforts, and it’s a nice change from cockroach infested trains and hard beds along the southern circuit.

Anyway to catch everyone up, read on above….