to the southernmost point of India

Varkala to Kanyia Kumari: 22nd May

This morning Pete and I boarded the train, where passengers are packed together like sardines - there’s hardly room to store my rucksack as one chap is sleeping where the luggage is supposed to go. Soon, the train passes in to a new state, Tamil Nadu and we arrive at the terminal stop, Kanyiakumari, India’s southern-most tip. As well as its geographic significance it is also a pilgrim town with an old temple. Its main street is bustling with juicebars with stacks of limes and oranges, sari shops and others selling chandeliers and garlands made of small white shells, dried starfish and pink conches on which they can engrave your name for a small extra charge.

At the shore people flock near the Triveni Sangamam, the bathing ghats. The strong southerly wind, breathes life in to saris, kameez and churidar, making people look like fluttering flagposts. Families sit on concrete benches and eat ice creams. An elephant is tapping the heads of tourists, an auspicious sign, if they put a rupee coin in the tip of its trunk.

This, the southernmost point is where three seas meet. As you look out to the sea facing the next landmass Antarctica, on the left is Vivekananda Rock which sits in the Bay of Bengal, where the swami meditated in 1892; an imposing stone statue of Thiruvalluvar the Tamil poet, faces towards India. Straight ahead, shiny black rocks emerge from the Indian ocean, like heads of surfacing whales. Waves create loud, crashing explosions of froth. To the right is the Arabian Sea beyond the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial where his ashes were kept.