At 03:10hrs on Thursday, 12th January, an astounding 81.25hrs after leaving Diburgarh in Assam, the journey/adventure/challenge/ordeal came to an end!
The Vivek Express crawled in to the non-descript, very much end of the line station of Kanyakumari with no fanfare and few passengers. I have no sense whether anyone else had made the complete trip but I suspect not. A couple of western tourists – the first I have seen since landing in Delhi, rode a few stops but jumped off before the end, as if they couldn’t care for the significance of the train and the journey it had just completed.
The juddering of the locomotive had seemed to get worse as we inched towards the final stop. It seemed to be a train that ran out of steam a long way from home and all the characters on board no longer wanted to be part of either. The juddery-ness and the rattling bogey left me wondering what the issue was and whether it would ever be inspected and had I been riding my luck on this train.
The very late arrival didn’t present a challenge getting a rickshaw and the homestay proved to be much nicer than anticipated although I slept for barely a couple of hours and woke with a really bad headache, full of a head cold. The breakfast offering was sadly limited to Idly Vada, I don’t have a dislike of it but the absence of fruit or curd was disappointing.
Kanyakumari is full of tourist-tat and a lot of litter which is a real shame as there is a strong feeling that you are somewhere locationally special. It is full of devotees adding a lot of colour to the town, particularly the ladies typically wearing bright red and orange saris, and complimented by men in black wraps with gold trimming. A lot of male devotees were keen to say hello and other than a fair few child beggars sadly, it was a town low on hassle.
After scoping out Sunset Point and the Sunrise Point, and wandering through the tacky stalls, I thought an ayurvedic massage would be restorative. There didn’t seem to be too many places around and unfortunately the place I chose, at a hotel, was average at best. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good massage, it just didn’t get close to some of the amazing ayurvedic massages I have had.
I returned to the hotel for a little while before heading off to Sunset Point, managing a quick swim in the water which was a perfect temperature. Hard to imagine it is early January, especially when everyone is freezing at home. Sorry! I was subsequently told by an Indian lady that my face had gone red. As the sun edged towards the horizon, the little cove I was sat at became increasingly crowded to watch the setting around 18:15 and as it sank, the long journey felt a distant memory already.
I found a place for a long awaited beer on the tatty market stall strip leading to Sunrise Point and once sat, couldn’t be bothered to get up and decided to eat there. Drinking two large British Empire (!) beers at 8% went straight to my head. Dinner was an excellent Malabar dry fried prawns which I am determined to recreate at home. It was bang on. Especially sat in such lovely warmth at night, something my wife and I miss from our Asia days (and Mediterranean holidays).
