Mahabaleshwar New Year III

This is the last installment of my Mahabaleshwar Odyssey, which had taken place about 3 months ago! Talk about promptness!! I have not been blogging regularly this year, unfortunately. It’s all got to do with working, not having Internet connection at home, and of course, plain laziness on my part!! After this blog, my next few blogs are going to be about my favourite Hindi phillumi songs of 2006. And I’m gonna try to keep those blogs coming in regularly! :D

Ok, in my last post, I’d spoken about Day 2 in Mahabaleshwar. Now I’m going to talk about Day 3, i.e. 31st December, New Year’s Eve. On this day we went to a lot of ‘points’ around Mahabaleshwar. The first one that we went to was Echo Point.

We saw some really beautiful views of the lake and the green, rolling hills.

P and J had a rollicking time screaming out our names and various other names making all of us collapse with laughter. We were acting like a bunch of teenagers! Heehee!

A five-minute walk away from Echo Point was Elephant Head, a bolder in the shape of, what else, an elephant’s head! :D It was quite an interesting sight!

Next we visited a Strawberry farm, where an enthusiastic kid explained the finer points of strawberry farming to us.

We had some delicious strawberry and cream there. We had had strawberry and cream every single day there. It was quite addictive!
We then made our way to Lodwick’s Point. An avenue of over hanging trees covered the road leading to it. I thought that it looked beautiful, something out of a Gothic romance novel! :) I’m just sad that I did not take a picture of this tree-lined avenue. I’m sure it is one of the scariest looking places at night!
Anyway, we arrived at what we thought was Lodwick’s point, but our surly driver informed us that we had to walk a small distance to actually get to this point. So we started walking, and were in good spirits, and I was quite happy to see that a tree-lined avenue also covered this path.

But soon, our happiness turned into misery, when even after walking for about 20 minutes, uphill, Lodwick’s point was nowhere in sight. Says a lot about our level of physical fitness! But anyway, we huffed and puffed our way up, and by the time we reached there, I had some very colorful terms for it!
We decided that making us walk so much was some sort of revenge on the part of our driver, who didn’t seem to like us much, and was always in a hurry to get rid of us! Talk about conspiracy theories! Heehee!
At Lodwick’s point we found this ledge sticking out into the valley below, and took turns climbing up and posing for the camera.
With Lodwick’s point, our Mahabaleshwar darshan came to an end. We then had our lunch and retired to our rooms, anticipating a fun night ahead!
Oh yeah! We got hold of this taxi driver in the market who promised to pick us up at our guesthouse, and to drop us back too. So we were quite pleased with ourselves!
At around 5.00 PM, the lights went out. So N and I just lay on the bed and chatted about this and that. When the lights didn’t come on till 7.00 PM, I began to worry a bit, as the driver said that he would pick us up by 8.30, and it does take me a while to get dressed! Turns out that it takes N quite a while to get dressed too! :D Well, the lights came on at 7.30 or so and N and I tried to get dressed as fast as we could manage!
Our taxi came to pick us up by 9.00 I think. We were all quite excited and raring to go and party! When we reached Hotel Fredrick we confirmed with the driver that he would come to pick us up when we called him (we had his cell phone number with us). To our horror he stated that he would come only if he woke up, as he planned on going to bed by 11.00 PM or so. We were a bit mad at him, but decided to go and enjoy anyway.
So we made our way down to the lawn where the party was being held. We sat around for a while, listening to the music.

We then left our handbags with a family sitting around a fire and went off to the dance floor to boogie! We sure did have a blast dancing to songs ranging from “Dil Mein Baji Guitar” to “Hips Don’t Lie”. At about 11.00-11.30 we began to feel hungry, and went in search of the snacks, which we had been promised would be inclusive of the tickets that we had bought. Well, guess what? All the snacks were over! All that was available was ice-cold cashew nuts and cold drinks. So we bought a plate of cashew nuts and bottles of Mirinda and sat down to eat our ‘dinner’. At quarter to 12 we once again made our way to the dance floor and swayed somewhat to the music, our spirits slightly dampened. At mid night we saw a wonderful display of rockets and hugged each other and screamed “Happy New Year!!” at each other! We danced a bit more energetically now, getting into the whole “New Year” mode again.
But after a while we decided to call the taxi driver, but he did not pick up his cell phone. We wondered what to do, and made our way to the gates of the hotel. Ms. Matron had told us earlier that there would be taxis waiting outside the gate, but we saw none. We did see a middle-aged couple leaving the party at that moment. We ran behind them, P shouting, “Uncle! Aunty!” When they turned around we asked them if we could walk back with them to their hotel. They agreed and we heaved a sign of relief! On our way we came across a lot of guys zooming around in cars and on bikes. One guy drove his bike quite close to where P and I were walking, and his buddy who was riding pillion made a grab at P, but as I was walking right behind her, I pulled her away. Some men can be just so disgusting at times! But that’s a rant for another blog…
Anyway, we reached Hotel Rajesh where the middle-aged couple was staying (J hobbling the whole way because her shoe strap had broken!), which was about 15 minutes away from our guesthouse. We were wondering how to get back and decided to stay back at Hotel Rajesh, when the man, Shaukat, offered to give us a lift to the guesthouse. We will be eternally grateful to him and his wife for driving us to the guesthouse! They were quite a delightful couple, pulling each other’s leg all the while! :)
So when we got back to the guesthouse, we decided to go to bed at once, because we were to leave the next afternoon. But we were all still quite hungry. So we got out some snacks that we had, and drank the last of the vodka and Sprite. Later on when we recalled our adventures to our friends back in Mumbai, N insisted on telling everybody what exactly we ate for dinner in painstaking detail! LOL!!
We stayed up till about 4.00 AM, just talking and laughing the whole time! I don’t even remember what we had chatted about that had made us laugh so uproariously!
The next day we got up a bit late, had our lunch and caught the bus back to Mumbai. The bus driver was some kind of an idiot! There was a traffic jam on the way, so he drove on the wrong side of the road to cut ahead. And he kept on driving on the wrong side for a few kilometers! P and I saw some openings, where the bus driver could have cut back on to the right side, but he kept on driving on the wrong side! He had to stop at last when he came across a tunnel! He then reversed all the way back till he found an opening to get on to the other side! P and I wanted to get off our seats and give him a piece of our minds!
Because of all his shenanigans (plus all the traffic jams that we encountered) we reached Mumbai late. We were all a bit sad that our adventure had come to an end. This has been the best New Year’s ever! For the first time in my life I wasn’t sitting at home with my parents, watching insipid shows on TV. And for making this the best New Year’s ever, I would like to thank my buddies, J, N and P! We sure did have a fantabulous time! :D

Mahabaleshwar New Year II

I’m updating my blog after eons! I still do not have Internet connection at home. I’m typing this out at home, then will copy it to a pen drive, and upload from an Internet café. What all one has to do to keep on blogging!!! LOL!!

Anyway, I will continue with my Mahabaleshwar Odyssey now. :))
I’d stopped the last time at the end of our first day in Mahabaleshwar. The next day we went to Panchgani.
Before I go on, I have to mention that all of the conversations that we would have, would always inevitably, come around to the point that we had nothing to do on New Year’s Eve, as the guesthouse where we were staying had nothing planned at all. We thought that we should check out any of the other hotels in Mahabaleshwar, which had some event planned. Everybody liked the idea, but then we wondered how exactly we would come back, as the guesthouse was a 15 minutes walk from the market place and a great deal more from the other hotels that we had seen.
On our way around Mahabaleshwar we had come across Hotel Frederick, which had a banner displayed up front announcing that it was hosting ‘The Wildest New Year’s Eve Party’. So on our way to Panchgani we stopped there and decided to enquire about the ‘Wildest New Year’s Eve Party’. We were met at the reception by a very matronly looking woman, who made us all feel as though we were back in school and had broken some sacred rule, and were to now receive our punishment! Ms. Matron told us that the party was only for couples, then looking at our despondent faces, asked us if we were only a group of girls, when we said ‘yes’, she decided to grant us the tickets to the party. We were quite excited and decided to purchase the tickets there and then.
We went back to our car and after the initial jubilation died down, began to wonder once again about how we would go back to the guesthouse after the party. We thought that we could ask the driver who was ferrying us around Mahabaleshwar, or maybe ask the guesthouse caretaker to suggest some alternative. So having to a conclusion we then had a delicious breakfast of corn cutlets and corn pakodas. They were terribly yummy and just melted in our mouths!
En route to Panchgani we stopped at ‘Parsi Point’, which offered a view of the green hills and lake.

We then reached the Panchgani ‘Tableland’ and were at once beset by a tangawalla and a ghodawalla. After working out which would be the cheaper option, we decided to go with the tangawalla. P sat upfront with the tangawalla, while N, J and I sat behind in the buggy. As soon as the horse took a few steps forward he reared up! All of us screamed, or maybe it was only I who had screamed! Hehe! But that was one scary experience! And throughout the ride the horse kept on acting funny, he would run just a bit too fast and I was really scared that he would keep on running over the edge and take us along with him! All of us were holding on to the buggy rails as tightly as possible!
We saw some 6-7 ‘points’ on the Tableland.

One of them being the footprints of the Paanch Pandavas. Apparently they had visited Tableland while they were on their Vanvaas.
The roller coaster buggy ride came to end at last and the tangawalla told us that if we wanted we could go down and check out a cave close by where we had stopped. I was quite gung ho about visiting a cave, and dragged the others along too. It was quite a steep climb down to the cave. There was a little restaurant being run in the cave, which offered modest fair like tea, coffee, samosas etc

. The cave was quite cool, literally and figuratively!

There were quite a lot of monkeys running around too.

After we finished our Tableland tour, we visited two Mapro factories. Mapro manufactures jams, squashes and some other stuff. I bought a bottle of mixed fruit jam for my grandma and a bottle of green apple squash for my brother and myself.
We then went back to Mahabaleshwar, had our lunch in the market place and went back to the guesthouse.
We lazed around in our rooms and this time decided to start out earlier for the market place than we had done the last time, when we had had to walk in the dark and pretty much freaked out!
N decided that she wanted to buy a skirt to wear to the party as all the rest of us were wearing skirts. She bought this gorgeous white skirt with sequins. We then fell upon this tiny shop that sold some very interesting jewelry. A lot of brightly colored stones were used. I bought myself two pairs of stone earrings, which I simply LOVE! :D I also bought two interesting looking necklaces. Then we went to this shoe store, and N bought a couple of pairs of shoes for herself. We even bought nail polish for the ‘Big night’! You can say that we really went all out! Hehe!
After we had shopped to our heart’s content, we stopped at a bakery for dinner. It was terribly crowded, and as there were only two tables to sit at, we decided to pack some burgers and pizzas and eat them at the guesthouse itself. So while I was standing in line for the food coupons, guess who walked in? Shaimak Davar and a bunch of his friends! So we gawked a bit, but as discreetly as possible! Most of them looked as though they danced in his troupe. One of the guys from the group was standing at the food counter and he just could not stand still, he kept on moving to the music that was blaring in the bakery. And the music that was being played was stuff by the Backstreet Boys, and Enrique Iglesias, and Ricky Martin – all the hits from my school days! :)
Anyway, our order took ages to come, and as soon as it did, we made our way to the taxi stand and rode back to the guesthouse . After dinner we decided to turn in a bit earlier than we had the previous night. So after playing one or two rounds of UNO, N and I went back to our room and fell asleep at once. And that’s where Day 2 in Mahabaleshwar comes to an end!

Mahabaleshwar New Year

First of all, let me wish all of you in Blogosphere a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
I've been unable to post a blog or even visit all of my favourite blogs in quite a while now. And that's because I was completely swamped by work. But now a project has just gotten over, and I feel free! I won't be for long is my guess, but I'm gonna try and make the most of it! :D

This New Year's weekend I went to Mahabaleshwar with three of my friends, J, N, and P. This has got to be the best New Year's I've ever had! Till now all I'd ever done was sit in front of the TV with my parents and get bored out of my brains! And I felt that I just have to celebrate my first year of financial independance in style! :)
All of us at office were sitting and wondering what we could do on New Year's eve, when J stated that she wanted to get away from the Mumbai crowds. I jumped at the idea at once. Then we had to decide where exactly to go. A lot of places were thrown up like Matheran, Lonavla, but we finally decided to go to Mahabaleshwar. I had been to Mahabaleshwar when I was in school, and had fond memories of the place, memories that invovled eating fresh strawberry icecream and corn patties! :D So I was quite excited to go back there.
P booked rooms in a guest house for free (I was extremly pleased about that!!) and I booked the bus tickets to Mahabaleshwar.
28th December, D Day arrived and I was terribly excited! What I did not know was how adventurous this trip was going to be!
Anyway, our bus was supposed to leave at 10:30 at night, so we had all decided to meet at J's home, as she stayed closest to the pick up point, which was in Chembur (an area in Mumbai). So all of us reached Chembur by about 10:00 PM. We waited for our bus, and waited, and waited, and waited some more. It was about 10:45 and there was still no sign of our bus. We went to the bus counter repeatedly and asked them when the bus would show up. The guy there kept on saying that it was late.
It was about 12:00 AM now, and the bus had still not come. Most of the shops had closed down, and everybody else around us had boarded their respective buses and gone. And there we were, four girls, sitting on our bags on the pavement in the middle of the night! J and P then went up to the guy and demanded to know what was going on. Even he was left scratching his head, and stated that the bus was never so late. He then called up the Dadar office, from where this bus was supposed to have started, and also called up the bus driver. The bus driver said that they had completely bypassed Chembur and were on their way to Vashi, a distant suburb in Mumbai. And he told us to go to Vashi to catch the bus! We were like, "What the @#%$?! is going on??!" We would now have to catch a taxi to get to Vashi. The man at the counter assured us that we would be refunded the taxi money.
Just a while ago J had mentioned that she had never been to Vashi, and wanted to visit it sometime, well she got her wish alright! LOL!!
We then caught a taxi, whose driver first said that he had no idea where exactly the place was in Vashi where the bus would be stopping. We looked at each other and just hoped that we would be able to find the place. We were in a hurry, but the cabbie decided that he just had to fill up his tank at that very moment. Don't know what he was doing before, when he was parked on the road side!
Anyway he filled up while we fumed and told him to hurry up. And after the tank was filled, suddenly a light dawned in his mind, and he said that he knew exactly where the bus would stop!
We reached Vashi at about 12:45, and got down near some bus stops. There were hardly any people around, and we could see a lot of creepy men standing around. So after P fought with the the guys at the bus counter to get re-embursed for the taxi fare, all of us stood near the bus stops. We must have waited for about 10-15 minutes and boarded our bus at about 1:10-1:15 AM! All I wanted was to sleep. But I knew from previous experience that I could never really sleep in a bus, and would be semi-conscious at the best.
"Apna Sapna Money Money" was being played in the bus, and save a few scenes that were chuckle worthy, most of the movie was quite yucky! But I must say that Ritesh Deshmukh does make a pretty girl! LOL!
Anyway, I tried to go to sleep, but these two women sitting behind would not shut up! They kept on chatting with some man behind them till 3:00-4:00 AM, and I was really ticked off!
We reached Mahabaleshwar at 6 in the morning. It was pitch dark outside and really, really cold! A taxi guy saw us and hurriedly put our bags in his car and took us to the guest house. He dropped us off at the gates of the guest house, which was on this desolate stretch of road. The entire place looked like a scene out of a spooky movie. On one side of the road there was this forest, and on the other we could barely make out the outline of a big forbiding looking bunglow beyond the gates. I just wanted to get inside and escape from the darkness and freezing cold.
P tried calling the caretaker of the guest house and after a few mistrials caught him at last. J then tried pushing the gates, and we realized that it hadn't been locked at all!
We were then met by an old woman who was bathed in the yellow glow of light emanating from the room behind her. How Hitchcockian could it get? :))
We were then taken to a room, where N and I collapsed on the beds. So J and P decided to take the other room that was booked for us. We slept till about 8 o'clock and got up to freshen up.
The tourist guide attached to the guest house then came calling, and we fixed up the schedule for the next 3 days.
We decided to visit Pratapgad Fort first.
We hired a guide there, Umesh, who claimed to be a descendent of a soldier from Shivaji's army. He sure was passionate about the fort and its history. He explained every aspect of it in detail. He was much better than any boring history book that I had read. The fort was quite fascinating, and we climbed up and down some 400 odd steps. Our friend, N, is rather short, so she had some trouble climbing up really high steps, but she sure did conquer them all! :))


Pratapgad fort is made up of rock, lime (chuna), milk and jaggery, and most of the structure is still standing tall!

The views from the the fort were quite amazing, rolling green hills everywhere!


There was this really interesting tunnel there. According to Umesh, if enemies ever entered Pratapgad, the army would escape through this tunnel, and sneak up and attack the enemy from behind.There was a short staircase that lead down to the tunnel after which there was a steep drop down the hill.

These people sure did lead an exciting life!


The last point that we visited there was the Punishment Point, from where criminals were thrown off into the valley below, wrapped in gunny sacks. I contemplated throwing some people off of there too! Hehe!
Opposite Punishment Point is a staue of Shivaji that was installed by the government..

After climbing up Pratapgad, we returned to Mahabaleshwar and had our lunch in the market. The guest house that we were staying in did not serve any food, so we had to have all of our meals in the Mahabaleshwar market. We ate at this place called Tinkler's (God knows why!) at least 3 times, and each time they insisted on playing songs from "Vivaah" and "Jaan-e-man"! So we heard "Mujhe Haq Hai" while eating breakfast and also during dinner! :D
When we got back to the guest house all of us were so sleepy that we decided to have a quick nap and then walk out to the market again for dinner. The quick nap stretched into 3-4 hours and I awoke at about 7:00 in the evening. We then decided to go to the market, which was a 15 minutes walk from our guest house. It was awfully dark outside with not a single street light in sight. As I'd mentioned earlier, the stretch of road on which the guest house lay is quite desolate, and in the darkness it just appeared more foreboding. Somehow we did make it to the market place.
After dinner on our way back (we decided to go back in a taxi) N suggested that we should get ourselves a small bottle of vodka to help us (ahem!) keep warm! ;)
So that night we played a few rounds of UNO and had vodka heavily diluted with Sprite and Limca. And contrary to popular belief, I did not get drunk!!! :p
We had a lot of fun gossiping about people we knew, and also people whom we didn't know that well! I've not laughed so much in a really long while! :)
Thus our first day in Mahabaleshwar came to a delightful end! And I will continue our further exploits in my next blog.

Koval-ummm!

Here I’m after aaaaaaages! I’m going to complete this long overdue post now!

So, last time I’d left off at the point where we had started off from Kanyakumari for Kovalam. En route we stopped at Nagercoil to visit the Padmanabhapuram Palace. The following three pics were taken by D.

It appeared to be a very well maintained structure. We saw everything from the royal bedchambers to the royal WC!! :D

I liked the Festival Hall the best because it had beautifully sculptured pillars and statues.

We arrived at Kovalam at about 2:30-3:00 in the afternoon. We stayed at a resort on Lighthouse Beach. Here is a pic of the lighthouse that I'd taken from my hotel room.

The view from our room was quite fabulous; tall coconut trees swaying lazily in the wind, and we could just about make out the sea in the distance.

After lunch we decided to snooze for a while. In the evening we decided to go for a walk on the beach. We were really surprised to see that the sand was black in colour. We later found out that in November-December the sand changes back to a pale yellow colour. This is all got to do with the way the sea moves, tides etc. This is also the tourist season in Kovalam.

Anyway, as I’d probably mentioned earlier, I looooooove water!! So I was completely excited and wanted to wade in. But Ma as usual was like, “Don’t go in too deep! The waves will suck you in!” Well, this time she did have a point, as the sea was really rough. You could hear the waves crash against the beach really loudly.

We then walked along the promenade and looked into all the seaside cafés. We then decided that we would dine at these cafés every night.

Next day we decided to go to Trivandrum. We first went to the Veli Tourist Village. There were lots of bizarre sculptures at this place!

This place was apparently first used for movie shootings, and has now been opened up to the general public. The best part was the speedboat ride that we had. I’d never been in a speedboat before, and I’m so glad I did at last! It was sooooo much fun! We were just zooming all over the place! The guy who was driving it took quite a few sharp turns and I could actually hear Ma squealing behind me. I couldn’t make out if she was enjoying herself or was just scared out of her wits! LOL!

As for me, I was just grinning like an idiot throughout the ride, and this song called “Na To Raa” (which I think means “Come with me”, but am not too sure) from a Telugu movie called “Ninne Pelladata” kept on playing in my head. Nagarjuna and Tabu had starred in this movie. All the songs in it are damn good! It was even dubbed and released in Hindi, but I forgot what the title was in Hindi. It is the song in which Nagarjuna and Tabu are enjoying all sorts of adventure sports on water.

Anyway, I digress, so lets get back on track. After the Veli Village we went to see the Padmanabhaswamy temple.

We then went to visit the Napier Museum, but couldn’t as it was a Tuesday, I think, and all the public places are closed on Tuesdays. So we then went to this departmental store called Parthas, and did a bit of shopping there. We then had lunch and headed back to Kovalam, with Dad in a very bad mood, as he thought that the entire day had been wasted since all the “places to see” were closed. As is his wont, the tirade did not stop till we reached our hotel in Kovalam, and D and I escaped into our room!

At night we dined at the Malabar Café. I had a pizza after a really, really long time and was very, very satisfied! :D

D was also satisfied as he got to watch the FIFA on a TV mounted at the restaurant. A variety of fresh fish were displayed outside most of these cafés, and one could inspect and choose which fish one would like to eat.

The next day we went to the Neyyar Dam sans D, as he just wanted to have a day of R & R on the beach. The road to the dam was just awful, and even though I had taken a travel sickness pill, I felt quite sick! At last we arrived at the dam and I was glad to walk on stable ground again!

The dam was surrounded by a large garden. We turned a corner and all of a sudden came face-to-face with a man peering at us through a binocular lens! I got so startled! And after a few seconds I realized that the ‘man’ wasn’t moving at all, and that’s when it hit me that it was just a statue! There were freaky statues like this all over the place! There was a statue of a woman in a swimming suit even at the edge of a swimming pool! Photgraphy around the dam was not allowed.

There was a Crocodile Protection Center some 3-4 km away from the dam. The poor crocs were kept in tiny cages. Most were quite small. The biggest one is the one below:

We then found out that there was also a Lion Safari Park just a few km away from the Crocodile Protection Center and we signed up for that along with another family, who were also from Bombay. I’d never been on a lion safari before, so turns out this trip was one of firsts for many things!

There are 3 female lions, 1 male lion and 2 cubs in the reserve. We were told that there was a distinct possibility that we may not come across any of the lions. We could hear the roars of the animals from time to time though. We then turned into a clearing and came across two of the lionesses.

We were all so completely thrilled! We were just about 2-3 feet away from wild animals! I rushed to sit in the seat just beside the driver’s and kept on filming the two lionesses on the camcorder, even though all they did was sit around and regard us with an air of utmost boredom! Some distance below the clearing was a large cage in which the two cubs were kept. The lion was sitting just outside the cage. The two cubs were not really all that small, and were kept separate from the lion to avoid any territorial fights.

At one point the driver asked me if I wanted to see the two lionesses walk. I just shrugged my shoulders and wondered how he would manage that. All he did was nudge the van closer to them. The two got up grumpily, walked just a few inches away and plonked themselves back on to the ground!

Then the driver got out on to his side (the lionesses were on my side of the van) and tried to get the lion to come up where we were. He shouted a bit and threw a stick or pebble to distract the lion and make him come up. At this point I grew quite nervous as the lionesses could come around on to his side at any moment and swipe at him as if he were a rat! I just wanted him to get back into the van and shut the door tight!

After the excitement of the lion safari we headed back to Trivandrum and visited the Napier Museum at last!

There is also a zoo somewhere close to the museum, but I was not in a mood to visit a zoo, so we just went to the museum. It had some really interesting artifacts ranging from Southern India to Fiji! There were also some models of the famous seals and statuettes found at Harappa and Mohenjodaro.

We spent the next day at our hotel, and I got a massage. This one was much better than the one that I’d gotten in Thekkady two years ago. I felt completely relaxed afterwards and I think it even cured my hair loss problem!!

At night we went back to the Malabar Café on the Lighthouse Beach promenade. It was our favourite little café. It even had a hotel attached to it.

Out of all of the places that we had visited this time, Kovalam was my absolute fav! It gave me a very “Dil Chahata Hai” feel! And the whole time that I was there I kept on thinking of how fantastic it would be to come back to Kovalam with all of my gal pals and spend an entire week (or more) just lazing around on the beach, eating at the Malabar Café, and maybe getting a massage or two. That would be just heaven! :D

The next day we got in to the Netravati Express and came back to Bombay after spending nearly 24 hours in the train, as it was terribly late! So I just spent the time getting onto D’s nerves by talking utter nonsense all the time and asking him innumerable questions! Hehe! Well, he deserved it for annoying me for all of my 23 years!

We were greeted by a very wet Bombay and all that was left of our trip were fond memories and a deep tan!

Kanyakumari

To recap from where I left off in the last post, we were walking toward our hotel in the fast approaching darkness, and my camera caught the static electricity bit, with Dad in the background looking very cross! :D

Next day we set out in an Ambassador car to our third destination, Kanyakumari. As usual I fell asleep almost as soon as the car started moving. This was a strange kind of phenomenon. Each time I stepped into a car on this trip, I would fall asleep almost immediately! I guess the anti-travel sickness pills that I was taking weren't helping matters any!

But I would wake up intermittently, and thank God I did, otherwise I would have missed some amazing scenery. We stopped for a while at the bridge that connects Rameshwaram to the mainland. The water here was of the most fascinating shades of blue and green!

The railway bridge is slightly below the one for motor vehicles. And Ma recalled that when we were on that bridge on our way to Rameshwaram, she felt as though if she just reached out of the window, she could touch the water! I unfortunately missed this sight because I was asleep on the upper berth.

It was a cloudy day when we set out for Kanyakumari. It even rained a little. Masses of grayish-white clouds were bunched up in the sky. Add to that the fields of coconut trees, green shrubs, and hills in the distance.

We even passed by fields of windmills. The sky at that moment took on a peculiar purple tinge. The views were absolutely breath taking!

We reached Kanyakumari sometime in the late afternoon. We could see the Swami Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the Thiruvallavar statue from our hotel balcony. On our first day it rained quite a bit, so plans to stroll down to the beach in the evening had to be cancelled.

We were in for a not very nice surprise when we went to the restaurant attached to our hotel for dinner. The food though sort of palatable was quite below par. No Nonsensical Dad flared up and fired all the poor waiters there about what terrible food we had been served. I felt bad for the poor guys, so I stated that there was no need to exaggerate. But next morning Ma found a big fat dead fly in her omlette! It was decided there and then that we would eat all our meals somewhere else.

Anyway, on our second day in Kanyakumari, we first visited the Suchindrum Temple, which is dedicated to Lord Shiva. I like the way South Indian temples are designed, with their beautifully sculpted gopurams, which are painted in vivid colours, although the gopuram of the Suchindrum temple wasn’t painted and was plain white.

We then went to the Kanyakumari railway station. It is the last station on the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. Here again D was up to his usual tricks and directed me to record him walking down the tracks, while Ma sang “Musafir hoon yaaron”! :))

Then we visited the Swami Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the Thiravullavar statue. For this we had to go in little boats. The sea was very, very rough and the boat tossed around quite a lot. I really had to control a strong urge to lean over and throw up!!

But I reached the Rock Memorial without parting with my breakfast! LOL! All the tourists were first ushered into a room and told about the history of the Memorial and how it was built. Right opposite the Memorial is a structure that houses the impression of a single footprint, which is supposed to be Goddess Parvati’s. Apparently she left it there when she was meditating standing only on her right foot.

The Memorial building houses the statue of Swami Vivekananda. No photography was allowed within, but we could take pictures from the outside.

Outside the memorial a Sunrise Calendar has been inscribed on the ground, and beside that is a structure called Sun Time. I’m guessing it tells one how to calculate the time of sunrise or sunset, but of course I could be wrong.

Strong gusts of wind were blowing, and I just loved that! :)

I forgot to add that from Kanyakumari one can see the waters of three different water bodies. The blue waters of the Bay of Bengal, the white waters of the Indian ocean and the black waters of the Arabian sea. We could just about make out the distinctions, especially the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal, because it was a very cloudy day and the distinction is apparently much sharper when the sun shines brightly.

So after wandering about the Memorial for a while, we took another boat to go to the island on which the Thiruvallavar statue stood.

Thiruvallavar was a saint-philosopher-poet who lived in B.C. I forget which year exactly! There are 70 steps leading up to the statue. So Lazy Parents once more elected to sit put at the base and D and I made our way up.

While we felt strong gusts of wind blowing when we were at the Memorial, it felt like a mini cyclone was attacking us when we got to the top of the Thiravullavar statue! We were literally and physically being pushed around by the wind! Sometimes sprays of water also fell on us. It was sooooo much fun!

So after being pushed around by the wind for a while we made our way down.

Next, we made our way to the Wax Museum. It houses mostly Tamilian celebrities, like Jayalalitha, Rajnikanth, Mohanlal and others.

A statue of Rahul Dravid is going to be installed soon. There’s also a statue of Shree Anandamayi Maa, which looked so real that it was spooky! The statues of Jayalalitha and Manmohan Singh were quite accurate too. But Rajnikanth’s statue didn’t look too real. But as I’m a great (ahem!) “Fan” of Rajnikanth, and had promised some friends to pose beside him, I did, with the “Baba” hand gesture!! I was hoping that his statue would be dressed in some flashy clothes on the lines of bright yellow shirt, but was disappointed to see it wearing a plain ole kurta. Ah, well! :D

Anyway, after this we ate at some other hotel and went back to our hotel. And thus the second day in Kanyakumari came to an end.

There was a lighthouse right beside our hotel and the revolving lights at night looked very pretty. I have tried to capture it using night mode on the camera but it’s not come out all that clearly.

Next day after breakfast D returned to our hotel room while my parents and I visited the Kanya Temple after which we did a bit of shopping for our family back in Hyderabad. Of course, I also bought some stuff for myself.

In the evening we visited the Church of Our Lady of Ransom. It was a beautiful church! And it looked even more beautiful with the azure sky in the background.

After spending a few moments there we made our way to Sunset Point. This was beside the sea. But the sea was in the southern direction. So all my dreams of taking the pictures of the sun drowning in the sea were shattered! And also it was a very cloudy day so the sunset was not as fabulous as I had expected it to be. But as most people know, I’m a sucker for sunsets, fabulous or not, and this one was stunning nevertheless! I had clicked 14 snaps of the sunset, and here are some of the good ones.

While the sun was descending we made our way to the rocks at the shore. I shot off toward a nice rocky outcrop, which jutted into the sea, with Dad in hot pursuit!! :)) The waves were lashing against these rocks with such ferocity! In fact I have never seen such rough waters ever in my life before I came to Kanyakumari. Below, the first picture was taken without the assistance of night mode, while the second close up was.

Water bodies and sunsets are two of my most favourite things! So one can imagine how much I loved being there at Sunset Point! I just didn’t feel like leaving, but as usual, all good things must come to an end… but not for too long! :D

The next day we set off for Kovalam in Kerala. But looks like I’ll have to have a separate post for that as this one has gotten quite long too. But I promise the third one will be the last in this series. :)