One early morning we left for Kanyakumari by
the 4.30am Mumbai Kanyakumari exp. We reached Kanyakumari by 12.30 noon and
went straight to the Vivekananda ashram (reasonable rooms are available here for stay but you have to book in advance the phone number is 04652-246250 / 247012) where we had our lunch. After taking a
room at one of the lodges we went straight to visit the famous Rock. Probably
because it was Easter time there was a huge crowd every where. We went over by
the ferry and spent our time taking photos and seeing and reading about this
Great preacher and Monk. We came back by about 4.00pm and visited the famous
Kanyakumari devi temple where we had darsan of the Devi.. Next we headed straight to Suchheendram temple 15 kms from
Kanyakumari town by an auto and had a guide show us around the huge temple
complex with its huge Hanumanji and intricate carvings. In one huge statue the
fingernails were so perfectly carved that the protruding nails were transparent
!!. Also the carvings were so advanced that our guide when he put in a straw
through one of the ears of the carving the straw came out through the other
ear, imagine all these were achieved in an era of hand tools !!.Similarly most
of the huge carvings were all made of single huge blocks of granite and suppose
if they had pillars in them, then, each one made a different musical note, if
you delicately drum on them with you hands. We headed straight back to the
ashram where we made a few book purchases at the ashram book store and went
ahead and had our dinner. After that we split up just by chance and visited the Gangotri museum where we were explained by a
slightly aged man there about how the rock was built into a memorial, the then
difficulties that they had to face and how a single great man of vision Sri
Eknath Ranadeji had taken upon the challenge and succeeded. We also visited Sri
Vivekanandji’s museum and a video room where an animated movie on the life of
the great monk was showing. Later we went back with the days memories back to
our lodge room.
The next day at 5.30am, we took the Kanyakumari Mumbai(train
No:6382) train to Trivandrum.
We reached there at around 8.30am and after leaving all our baggage at the
railway station cloak room, went straight to the famous Sree Padmanabhaswami
Temple. There we changed
into the traditional mundu for guys and interestingly for, women-in-churidhars,
they supplied us with a piece of cloth to wrap around our churidar pant. We had
a wonderful darsan of the reclining Lord Sree Vishnu through three great doors,
because the idol was that large. From there we went to visit the great Kudhira
maalika palace (kudhira meaning horse and maalika meaning upstair called so
because this palace has a front balcony covered with a grill made of wooden
carvings of around hundred horses and which looks out into a beautiful lawn), a
guide showed us around and we saw lot of weapons used during that time,
dressing table used by the then queen, huge mirrors, large and small vases,
table lamps, great paintings, and many more. All through the palace roof when
one looked up, the roof had wonderfully carved wooden surface. The black
flooring still carried that shine. It seems that it took a thousand workers
four years to build this palace. From there we went to the Zoo and museum
complex. At the zoo we saw a lot many snakes, monkeys, zebra, giraffe, tiger,
leopard, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, deer, Ostrich, crocodiles, many types of
wild birds, etc. We also visited the natural History museum where we saw the
full skeleton of a elephant and a huge lower jaw bone of a whale apart from the
skeleton of a human. We also saw a lot of the wild animals like the cheetah
stuffed and preserved here. Also we saw different types of birds side by side
for comparison and different foetus of animals preserved in formalin bottles.
After seeing and having learnt a lot and also because it was getting time to
board our train back to Cochin,
we head back to the railway station to catch our 4.30pm Intercity train. We
reached Cochin at around 9.15pm and after having dinner at the Udupi restaurant went back home full of sweet memories and tired worn out feet.
