Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Destination South [Rameshwaram~Kanyakumari~Kovalam]

Introduction:
The group consisted of Satya(Tobe professor from IISc.),Purushottam(from Healthscribe), Jaya(Opps Mgr. from Intel), Gururaj (from Healthscribe) & myself. We were to board the bus 19:00 hours at Wilson Garden bus stop (KPN Travels to Ramanathapuram). We all made it in time except Satya, who was late by atleast 30 minutes, the bus left the bus stand and he had to catch up with our bus and board it :D, he got into an auto and chased us.. He ended up spending INR 150 for riding just 2 kms !!

Below is the Complete itinerary:

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Day 1 [2nd Oct 2009] - Rameshwaram
Our first destination was Pamban Bridge, supposed to be the longest suspension railway bridge in India. Pamban Railway Bridge By the time we got off it was 1300 hours, without any place to freshen up we stayed dirty; ended up treating ourselves with Ice Creams for breakfast/lunch. Soon we checked into a local lodge at Rameshwaram Island freshened up and contacted a local Maruti van to take us around for INR 500. We covered Abdul Kallam's residence, Dhansukoti, Rama Teertha, Seetha Teertha, Lakshmana Teertha, Pancha Mukhi Anjaneya temples. 7 horses from nowhere in Dhanuskoti Dhanskoti is the best and must not be missed!! We even got a chance to touch and feel the floating rocks in one of the Sri Ram temples. We visited Rameshwaram main temple very late and missed tasting water off the 22 sacred wells!! FYI timings for tasting the holy water -> 0430~1200 hours. After dinner at local restaurant we headed for the last bus at 22:15 hours towards Madhuri.

Day 2 [3rd Oct 2009] - Kanyakumari
From Madhuri we hit Nagercoil and then to Suchindram Temple complex. Here we had our archane done and offered bettle leaves to lord Hanuman (the sculpture here is a lot different and looks majestic). Next we checked into Vivekananda Kendra which is a few Kms away. We had breakfast at the Kendra and head of to sight seeing, we covered the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the Tamil poet's statue(which I do not find impressive at all, its made of large rock chunks cemented with seams clearly visible). Later we visited the holy Kanyakumari Temple and checked out the diamond nose ring. View from sunset point (Kanyakumari) The last part for the day was sunset for which we had to walk 4 kms. The sunset was a surprise with clear skies... the deep orange colouring's unforgettable. We postpone the sunrise to next day and ended the day playing Poker till 0100 hours.
I did win 1 of the 2 games played!

Day 3 [4th Oct 2009] - Kanyakumari Sunrise ~ Kovalam
Next morning we woke up at 0600 hours but not in time for sunrise; by the time we made it to sunrise point it was 0630 hours. The place is clean and well maintained. We soon checked out and headed to Triveni Sangam, which we failed to notice a day earlier, wasn't impressive though. Getting to Kovalam was a pain we had to change 2 busses and 2 autos.. In the end wasn't very impressive, however we played around in the salty water which was the last part of our 3 day trip.

Finale
#1 Kanyakumari is losing its charm due to over commercialisation, hawkers and careless tourists; you see litter, bottles, hawkers everywhere.
#2 Rameshwaram is truly amazing I wish I had a couple more days to spend, its truly a different experience
#3 Travel b/w Trivandram~Bangalore by Volvo twin axel was most expensive INR 925!
#4 We missed Adams bridge in Rameshwaram which is further away from Dhanushkoti

5 comments:

Puru said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Puru said...

Madhuri.na??? AvLna yavaglo meet madDhe...

Senthil said...

If you want more info on Kanyakumari

visit travelkanyakumari.com

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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