Day 24

I woke up very early for the sunrise and went to the spot described as sunrise spot. Along the way I saw that there are a lot of people at the streets already. When I reached the spot I understood that huge crowds are gathering there in the early morning to see the famous sunrise.

Brother of the little girl from yesterday contacted me through Instagram and apparently they were also there, but crowd was so big that it was hard to find each other. We waited for the morning, but cloud cover was so big that we all waited long until it was already bright morning, but sun still wasn't visible. The brothers' of the girl found me, but she or their parents weren't with them. We talked for a bit and interesting thing is that only one of them was speaking English, the other was asking for translation - and the first one didn't have the same level of English as his younger sister. Later on when I was returning to hotel I met her again. She spotted me and run towards me to say hello. They were leaving Kanyakumari now.

I still had to deal with returning laundry and after that I had whole day to deal with the rest of places, big monuments and huge queue to them covered yesterday. I visited Gandhi Memorial first, then went to the main temple complex of the town - Sri Kanniyakumari Amman Temple. I was crossing close by it many times, but wasn't sure about entering before, but now I was determined. There were signs that men are not allowed in upper garment. I went through queue and take off my shirt along the way. It felt strange and little bit like revealing myself. I was thinking about the news I had in Kerala about some movement or some comments recently made about banning this practice of obligatory shirt removal - there are some caste connection, as it makes visible what necklaces you wear that it could reveal your belonging. It was definitely beautiful place, but little dark there. Not only in the sense of lack of light or walls being made out of darker rock, but it was general feeling I had. I didn't know how to behave so I just observed what others are doing and passing through the corridors. It was definitely interesting experience, but it feels like there's always commercialization around more famous temples. On the way inside you can buy various things for offerings or materials for tilaka and I didn't know what I suppose to take or if anything is obligatory.

Next I went to something described as Vivekananda Kendra on the map. You enter it by crossing huge gate and at first it looks like university campus, then it looks more like retreat - meditation center (and as far as I understand, it is something like that exactly) and then it changes into something like well maintained park. Especially in that last part there were not much people there. While I was walking there, with barely any people visible, among chirping birds and roaming peacocks, I get some thought. In India there's very little space as tranquil as this one. Everything seems to happen along the streets and because pedestrian lanes barely exists - and if they exist they are either way occupied by something like parked motorbikes, seller stands etc. As much as I enjoy constant chatter and joy of life of people here, it was nice to have little time to rest in peaceful environment. At the end of it I reached the ocean and I went into some low dry grass that had something like big seeds with spikes that just covered my chappals so much and so deep that I actually felt it through them. I had to pick them up one by one when I left it. Suddenly bus of North Indian tourists appeared and older men wanted photo with me, but women were too shy.

I decided that there's not much left to see for me in Kanyakumari, so I went for a brief swimming at the tip of India. The beach is rocky and so there's many rocks under the surface and in effect I had to be careful. Sunset was coming and sun was visible almost to the horizon, but there were clouds above the horizon, so sunset at the ocean wasn't exactly visible, but the view was still very nice.

Last thing that I did before leaving to my hotel was buying backpack. I wasn't entirely sure if I should that, because I felt it's tail end of my trip. But in the end I decided for that, because backpacks here were cheap, I felt done with my trolley bag and there were still few trips ahead of me.

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