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Published: March 3rd 2012
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Today marked two important symbolic events. One, we visited the Southernmost point in India, yey! Two, it was the halfway point for our trip, boo! (well it was yesterday in truth but that ruins the symbolism of today). I should also note that this will be published well after the day in question, so the date of publishing is not the same as the day referred to above.
The Southern tip of India is a fairly unremarkable place, much like Lands End is a fairly unremarkable place, in fact I imagine many countries extremities despite being major tourist attractions are actually fairly unremarkable, if not just plain boring. The Southern tip does have a few things going for it however. Firstly it is the Southern tip of India which is in itself an achievement. Secondly being the Southern tip it is surrounded by water which is handy because it is bloody hot, even though it was technically ‘winter’ when we visited, it was still about 37 degrees. Thirdly Jenny (our TL) designated today a tuna sandwich lunch day, yey! Now that may not sound very exciting to you, but when you rarely get to eat a decent western style sandwich
(with actual mayo!) then the thought and taste of some tinned tuna, a bit of cheap mayo and some warm cucumber seems like a real luxury. It’s actually quite nice that you come to view things like a tuna sandwich (and a hot water shower) as a luxury, it’s nice to appreciate and get excited about things that you would normally be so blasé about.
While at the Southern tip, we dipped our feet into the water, ate (devoured in my case) tuna sandwiches, admired the odd statue of Tamil saint Thiruvalluvar that is built on an island just off the Southern Peninsula and shooed off an army of very persistent hawkers who were selling the crappiest looking fake pearl necklaces I have ever seen.
We left the Southern tip around 14.00 and headed towards Madurai arriving around 17.30ish. For the past few weeks I had almost forgotten we were in India, Kerala is a wealthy state with low levels of poverty and we had been staying in small touristy resorts which were somewhat disconnected from the day to day life of ordinary Indians. However, Madurai (the second largest city in the state of Tamil Nadu) brought home
with a bang that we were still very much in India. The experience was somewhat reminiscent to the initial culture (and noise) shock I received when arriving in Delhi. Madurai is over populated, noisy, smelly, manic, chaotic and did I mention really bloody noisy? But, in a way it was nice be back in the chaos, we had been sheltered for the past few weeks and it was to feel like we were travelling through real (whatever real means) India again. Upon arrival me and my soon to be ex room buddy (boo!) Peter went for a beer (he really is a bad influence!) at a cheap, working mans drinking establishment. It was a pretty grim place but interesting in it’s grimness nonetheless. We were pretty sure drink would be cheap here given the owners obviously weren’t paying much for the upkeep of the premises, or the upkeep of the refrigerators for that matter judging by the warmness of our beer. Sure enough when the waiter asked us for 150 RPS for two beers (about 2GBP) we felt very happy at the price. However upon receiving 150rps from us the cheeky bugger said “no, no it’s 450 rps”, to which
we said “no bloody way you cheeky ****”. Ok we didn’t actually say this but we certainly made it clear we would not pay 450 rps (about 5.50 GBP) for two beers. Beer ranges in price but typically you pay between 75-150rps (1-2 GBP) per beer, this greedy **** was trying to charge us 225rps per beer which is more than we paid for beer in Indigo one of Mumbai’s best and most expensive restaurants. We refused to pay more than 150rps per beer (still too much really) and then left a little pissed off but ultimately more concerned about dinner, lunch had been a long time ago and we were hungry.
Tomorrow we would be visiting Madurai one of India’s oldest cities and indeed one of the oldest in South Asia (or so the Rough Guide claims)...........
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Vicki-Sue Brotherhood
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Kanyakumari and hot showers!
Kanyakumari is trueley as exciting as you describe it! However you failed to mention the incredible amount of plastic chintz for sale along the sea front, the worst toilets in India and the strongest stench of fish or that's how i remember it and of course the obligatory beggers and scammers! But as always with India: with the fondest of memories and a smile on my face. Sounds like you have fallen for Mother India's seductive charm, it's hard not to! Loving the blog Mark. Oh BTW are you missing REAL cheese as well as hot showers? How we take things for granted in the west eh? Namaste Ji xxx