Travel Tales of a Backpacker~ Day 3-Kanyakumari

Hello everybody and welcome back to my blog for more from my travel tales in Southern India 🙂

In previous three blogs you read how my travel was planned and what all we explored on my Day 1 and Day 2 in Pondicherry, if you have not read them already please do so now !!!

Here we go for the next part of my travel destination…. Kanyakumari!!!

Since I did not get the direct train ticket from Pondicherry to Kanyakumari, I first went to Villupuram Junction and then had a connecting train from there for Kanyakumari at 20:00 hrs. It was a night journey so I managed to save on the hotel accommodation (in my case it was stay in dormitory)

I reached early in the morning around 05:40 hrs at Kanyakumari. The dormitory or retiring rooms were not operational there so I got freshened up in the waiting room at the station and then parked my luggage in the cloak room there and went out to Triveni Sangam which is at about ten minutes walking distance. The whole place was bustling with tourists from all over to witness the sun rise.

I did not click any pics of sun rise here but did take some really nice pics of the things and places i found interesting, like this one below. The two very prominent structures at Triveni Sangam are the giant Thiruvalluvar statue and Vivekananda Rock Memorial.

The statue of great south Indian scholar Thiruvalluvar

Thiruvalluvar also known as Valluvar was one of the celebrated Tamil Poet and Philosopher who authored Tirukkural which is a cherished text in Tamil literature and has a collection of couplets on ethics, political and economical matters and love.

Vivekananda Rock Memorila

Vivekananda Rock memorial is a monument made on one of the two rocks at a distance of about 500 meters from the mainland. Legend has it that Swami Vivekananda did meditation for seeking answers. It was after his mediation here for 3 days that he made decision to go to Chicago where he delivered his world famous speech.

One has to take a ferry to go to the Vivekananda Rock memorial. The memorial houses the temple on one side and Dhyan mandapam on the other.

The Temple

Dhyan Mandapam

Besides these two monuments there are so many more to explore in Kanyakumari. And the good part is that they all can be explored in a day and that too walking.

On the banks of Triveni Sangam very close by is Mahatma Gandhi Memorial. It was built in 1956bin memory of the great leader. It is said that Gandhiji’s ashes were put in 12 different urns to transfer them to different parts of the country. One of these urns was placed here before immersing it in the waters of Kanyakumari for people to pay their homage to their leader.

Mahatma Gandhi Memorial

The next place that I went to was a watch tower. This watch tower gives a 360 degree aerial view of the entire area. Watching the waves hit the building of this tower from the top of the tower is breathtaking.

The watch tower

Close to watch tower is a fish aquarium which houses various species of marine life.

Kanyakumari also has a Government museum and an Exhibition on Swami Vivekanda which showcases his life journey.

The building which showcases the life journey of Swami Vivekananda

One of the attractions is ‘Our Lady of Ransom Church”. The original ancient church was built by the Portuguese and this below is the new building constructed in 20th century sometime in 1956.

Our Lady of Ransom Church

The walls of the church displays the story of Crucifixion of Jesus. The interiors of the church was beautiful and the windows were made of so many colorful glasses. The whole ambience was very peaceful, calm and serene. I sat inside the church for some time and could feel the spiritual vibes of the place.

There was this one more cathedral which I saw and it was close to the boating club, it was closed in the afternoon so I could not go in and neither could I find what it was called as. The exterior looked beautiful and below is the pic for you all to savor.

I had a great time exploring Kanyakumari and look forward to visiting here sometime again. Have you been to Kanyakumari? If no, I would highly recommend you all to visit this place.

As much as I enjoyed being at this place I also thoroughly enjoyed writing this post. I hope you all like it and support me to write more about my travels by posting comments and writing to me.

My next blog will be about my visit to Chennai, also the last on this series on my visit to southern India, so stay tuned, until then you all take care and stay safe stay happy 🙂

Love & gratitude,

Nilesh Sharma