On the topic of travel: Tamil Nadu: First stop Kanyakumari

            As long as I am in the mood of talking about travel, let me try and pull together my travel memories from childhood. There is an interesting common theme to it all. It is all in the state of 'Tamil Nadu' :D.

            My dad was a huge Tamil Nadu/Chennai and Travel fan. He used to take us on a travel vacation every summer in our summer holidays at school. The letters 'LTC' meant lot of fun!.Untill recently i just assumed he loved tamil nadu so he always took us to places in TN. But I asked him recently in my India trip as to why he never took us on vacation in the north and he said 'It gets too hot in Summer in the north'. I was a little thrown off at his answer because of my assumption. But with personal experience, it is TRUE!! South is so much better because of the peninsular humidity. North is just plain dangerously hot in summer.

              I dont know the exact order and time line of which year I visited what place, but I will blog in the order of most memorable and most liked places. In that list ofcourse the first would be :

1. Kanyakumari 

This is most memorable because I have been to this place more than once. If I remember correctly three times.

Once with my mom, dad and sisters. Second with my family along with pati and thatha [dad's parents] and the third time was just me and my dad.

The most memorable things at this place for me are :

(1) Sunrise/Sunset at the Ocean. Kanyakumari was my first experience of seeing an 'Ocean'.

I had been to beaches on bay of bengal before, where I have seen sun rise and set at the horizon, in a vast expanse of water, however watching the same at the Indian Ocean, with no landmass on three sides of the peninsular tip of the country is a whole another experience.

It was very memorable for me. The time me and my dad went on our own, my dad was trying to capture the sunset picture when a foreigner from Japan, named Oshido approached us and asked if we can take a nice picture of him looking at the sunset.

He had no knowledge of the english language and my dad could not understand a thing he said, but as a kid I guess we are better at understanding sign language or get what the fellow human being is saying without the language barrier. I interpreted the request to my dad.

Oshido posed like he was looking at the sunset and asked my dad to take a side profile of him. He then told my dad I was cute and asked if he can take a picture with me. Of course that is the reason I still remember his name : D

(2) The three seas meeting at the southernmost tip of the country. You can see three distinct colors in the ocean. Darkest blue farthest is the Indian ocean. Light green and light blue are the Bay of Bengal and Arabian sea, closer to the land. I kept wondering why they maintained their original colors and did not mix-up when they met. well, still wondering...any thoughts?

(3)Vivekananda Rock is of course one of the main attractions when you get here. This is a very small island rock close by the shore. Apparently Swami Vivekananda spent a lot of time at this place and used to swim to this rock to meditate. Now there is a constructed Vivekananda memorial with a meditation hall in it. Again the view of the seas from this rock is spectacular, now surrounded by water on all sides.

(4) Vattakottai Fort is another memorable place. It is a few kilometers away from the southern most tip. What I remember is the walk on the mud roads to the fort from the main road where the rickshaw walla dropped us. I had a camera around my neck that belonged to dad of course. There were kids running out of their huts on the road side and would shout at us to take their pictures. I guess the foreigners got them used to that 'fun activity'. Since I was also a child at that time, I was not too excited by this. But now I feel like I should have taken a picture with them. It would have been memorable. The interesting things about the fort are that it extends into the sea quite a bit. As a kid I could not contemplate how you can build a fort on water. So I was amazed! This fort was apparently used as a coastal defense fort and has some history of a war. There is an elevated vast open area in the fort where it extends into the water and you have a beautiful view of the ocean on one side and western ghats on the other side. If i remember right, it is believed that one of the hill that you can see from there called 'Marutha Malay' was a portion of a hill dropped by Hanuman when he was carrying a hill to Srilanka. This is known to be a very medicinal hill and the rishi Agasthya seems to have practiced his medicine here.

(5) Suchindram temple is close by also, where I remember seeing the tallest Hanuman statue ever. We were told by locals that the statue has been growing in height every year and that the original statue was no bigger than a regular human being. Wikipedia says it is 6 meters high. This temple also has musical columns. When you tap on different columns in a row, you get different notes of music. Pretty neat architecture.

These are what I remember. If you are looking for travel guidance to this place, you cannot miss the latest 'Thiruvalluvar Statue' which is right next to the vivekananda rock, supposed to be taller than statue of liberty. Would love to go back there sometime and see the statue.

Going back on memory lane I will continue to write about the following places that I visited as a kid, as individual posts whenever I can .....

2. Rameswaram

3. Madurai Meenakshi temple

4. Trichy, Tiruttani Temple

5. Kodaikanal

6. Ooty

7. Tirunelvelli

8. Chidambaram

9. Tanjavur

10. Coimbatore

11. Kutrallam falls

12...etc as I remember more.