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!
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