the road to kanyakumari

After having breakfast at Rameswaram, we started for kanyakumari at about 10 or 10 .30 on that morning....The breakfast was a chaotic affair.Every restaurant at Rameswaram seemed full or could not accomodate a ten member party like us.The one ,we found at last,was already running out of supplies at ten in the morning.The harrassed looking bearers trying to cope up without success,.... If the puri was ready, curry was not...the dosai was ready ,the chutney was"nt...I was amused to see the manager smiling to himself as he gave up on bringing a second helping of chutney to my husband.Obviously,it was a rush season,being summer,but i could not help wondering why they did not prepare themselves beforehand...well... they had their own problems i daresay...Quite simply it could have been impossible., the popullation being what it was..Infact it is almost the same routene everywhere....the hotels are full... the gold shops are full, notwithstanding the rsing prices,..the steel shops are full...the trains are full..the temples are full.


Kanyakumari was almost a five hour drive,from rameswaram ..Sundaram informed us...he was unwinding at last..We came back on the same road we travelled earlier,up till manamadurai,then passed the towns of Aruppukottai(can it be called a town?),a place called virudhnagar,...bypassed the town of Tirunelveli and then over a small village called Valliyoor,...straight to Kanyakumari.

We had lunch at Aruppukottai and it amazed me the way they served perfect vegetarian food in T.N ,at such small places too ,They were also very hospitable...seeing Anasuya who was not eating anything..--.she said she was feeling nauseous..--,.(here i was doing prayers for her health,and the girl says she got a throat infection and developing a fever)..the servers kindly brought her a sweet and buttermilk ,pressing her to have something...I mean,... one could find it difficult to get good food at remote places in A. P, like say ..interior telangana,...ceded districts or up east at vizag and vizianagaram..


It was a lovely stretch of journey especially from Valliyoor onwards to kanyakumari...Palm groves sidelining the road and... WINDMILLS....hundreds of windmills were there...whirling and dancing...As we drove along ,dusk seemed to be running too, trying to overtake us.Srinivas and the kids were so set on seeing the sunset in arabian sea,,but unfortunately we seemed to have taken too much time,somehow got delayed and ,now it seemed we could not make it in time to the cape.Sundaram did his level best, even contacting someone at Kanyakumari for the latest forecast... Alas,even if we somehow managed to reach there,....there was no sunset visible on that evening at cape camorin on 18 may,2006, clouds having come in the way.Prasanna shook her head in frustration,,,,"we were not lucky enough".
As evening closed in,we reached cape and drove straight to the shores.....may be we hoped to catch a glimpse.but there was not even that and we turned in to the courtyard of HOTEL MANICKAM, a multi storeyed affair by the seaside,where from the fourth floor(i think so), (the lift was under repair too)we peeped in from the balconies , breathing in the sea,and enjoying the sounds as the waves rolled back and forth.The night had already fallen.