Madurai, Kanyakumari

Like most of Tamil Nadu cities, also Madurai is famous for its huge and grandiose temple complex. All the carvings and details on the temple complex buildings are truly amazing.

sewing and market section in the temple

Holy cow !!!

Actually, we are really much back in time with reflecting our journey. But better later than never, so we continue uploading some of our pictures (there are 10 000 of them all together) of our trip with comments.

-----

It was beginning of January, when we ended up in Madurai. It is time when Kadri has a birthday and just like we celebrated Branko's birthday in Iran with a holy lunch and parrot, the fortune-teller, so it was also on Kadri's birthday.

Birthday dosa. Probably the cooks knew about the birthday, because it was the biggest dosa in Kadri's whole life.

Our waiter ;-)

The "Banana leaf restaurant"

And fortune. Parrot picked the card with Shiva and Parvati for Kadri, which was supposed to mean, that everything will be great..... :-)

Another exotic thing that we tried during our stay in India - coconut tree. Tasted like turnip with the flavour of coconut.

In Madurai, we also noticed something that seamed to be very unusual for India - a "non-veg. restaurant", but of course it was empty....

KANYAKUMARI (CAPE COMORIN)

We reached to the most southern tip of India - the land's end. It is the meeting point of three seas - Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Behind this water, there is no other land than Antarctic. We had no chance to go further south, so after few days we headed back to north.

The geographical location of Kanyakumari is actually very special, because once in every month, it is possible to see the show of sun setting to the west and moon rising from the east. Unfortunately there was no full moon during our stay, so we had to be satisfied only with seeing tropical sunset, which was no less exciting.

People watching the sunset.

Land's End

The same island as on the upper picture, in the night.

Kanyakumari is not only known for being on of the thousands of Hindu pilgrimage spots, but it is also known for the wondering monk Swami Vivekanda, who meditated here before setting out to the pilgrimage to preach about his concept of life to the rest of India. The island 400m offshore is dedicated exactly to him. Although the huge statue belongs to one Tamil Nadu poet instead.

There is an interesting Wondering Monk museum in Kanyakumari with many stories of his life.

One of them went like this:

Once, Swami was passing through Rajputana (which is present day Rajhasthan) in a train and was traveling with 2 Englishmen in the same compartment. They took him to be an ignorant monk and made jokes in English at his expense. The Swami sat as though he did not understand one word. When the train stopped at a station further on he asked the station-master in English for a glass of water. When his companions discovered that he knew English and had understood all that they had said, they were much embarrassed by their conduct and asked him why it was that he had not shown any sign of resentment. He replied…”My friends, this is not the first time I have seen fools.”

-----

Hindu women washing their saris and drying them then.

Jump on the Land's End

What else is in the end of the land, besides the sea ? Shit !

Just next to the sea in Kanyakumary, there is a market street. And where else should the poor selling stuff go to lighten themselves during the day, than to the beach. Sea will flush after them one day anyway !

Shit walls are not as common in India, as pee walls, but there still are some...

Mahatma Gandhi museum - it is more interesting from outside, than from inside....

...... but at least the balcony serves as a great view point