Trip to Madurai - Rameshwaram - Kanyakumari

Bangalore – Madurai:
My in-laws, my wife Prachi and I went for a pilgrimage, but not in its real sense, during this Christmas vacation. Our bus to Madurai was at 10.00 P.M. As always, being afraid of the Bangalore traffic, we reached Majestic, the bus station of Bangalore before an hour. There was little crowd compared to long weekends that I had seen earlier. Thanks to ‘id’ that fell a day earlier. My mother-in-law was shuttling along the platform to get some relief from her leg pain; my father-in-law was anxiously waiting for the bus, while Prachi and I were observing the crowd and chatting on undefined topics. “Airavat”, the KSRTC (Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation) bus in which we had to travel arrived at right time, but departed 15 minutes late, which is not considered late in Indian context. Three of us sat together in the last seat, leaving my father-in-law, two or three seats ahead. We were provided with a bottle of water and blanket. After 6 hours of travel, as well as sleep, bus halted for a short time, waking us up. Looking at the watch I assumed that we had reached Karur. But getting down I realized we had just reached Salem, some 2 hours short of Karur. I woke up at 6 A.M only to understand that we are so late by then. We were just traveling from Karur to Dindigul. As the day broke, I found that the road was under construction and only one side of it was being used, which required lot of maneuvering from the driver, and ultimately making our destination look far away than it was. The route of the entire trip provided opportunity to the driver to enhance their maneuvering skills. We reached Madurai at 10 A.M. Thanks to the nature. I wake up everyday only with nature’s call. It would have been so difficult, had nature called today. But, Prachi was in trouble to reach the hotel soon, hahaha. Contrary to our plan of taking a taxi to the hotel room, we took an auto-rickshaw as it was immediately available at no cheating (added bonus in unknown cities of Tamilnadu, where meter is not a norm). We reached “Madurai Residency” at 10.30 A.M. It looked decent from outside and at the reception. But the rooms were normal compared to the other rooms that we had stayed during the trip at lesser cost than this. After refreshing, we booked for a cab at the travel desk for our further travel and had our lunch. When it comes to dinning table, Prachi becomes a total south Indian. She had no problem eating total south Indian meal, even without a single roti, while her parents were having a hard time, all through the trip. During lunch we met my colleage Bhupesh and his wife, who was in the same hotel as part of their tour. They had already visite Rameshwaram the previous day. They had a similar agenda as ours, except that they planned to spend a day at Trivandrum.

Madurai:
After filling our stomach and relaxing for sometime, we set off for Madurai sight seeing. I doubt whether it can be called ‘sight seeing’, as it included only Thriumalai Nayakar Mahal and Meenakshi Amman temple. We avoided visit to Thirupparangkundram temple to save time. Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal was under renovation. This is not very old piece of work considering Indian history. Currently it is open all through the day without any break due to renovation work. The entrance fee per person is Rs.10 and additional fee for cameras as every other place. It is not a mahal as the name claims. It is a big arena surrounded by pillared pathways, beautiful arches and decorative roof. It borrows the style from Europe. This seems to be the hang-out place for the boys and girls of this area, more than a tourist place. The musical light show has been temporarily suspended due to the renovation work. It did not take more than half an hour to completely walk around this place. In added information on this place - This is place where the first song "Kehna hi kya" in hindi version or "Kannalane" in tamil version of the film "Bombay" was shot. After a little temptation of shopping handloom sarees, we boarded the taxi to reach Meenakshi Amman temple.

Normally, any temple in Tamilnadu is closed between 12 noon to 4 PM, offering the deity some time to nap. We entered the temple through the West entrance. This temple was also under renovation. As we passed through the security check, I observed a unique thing, which I had never seen earlier. During the security check, all tobacco stuff like gutkha were detached from their proud owners and collected at the gate, snatching any chance for these painters to show their modern ‘spit-art’ around the corners. As some more time was left for the temple opening, we went around the temple seeing the fenced music stones (which I had listened a long time back when I visited the temple with my father as a young kid), thousand pillar hall, museum and the black dhoti crowd (Sabarimala devotees). Museum was not lit properly, though it had very good collection of sculptures and paintings. If the thousand pillar hall was vacant it would have been magnificent to look at. Seeing few camels in the prahara, I wondered if the Hindu tradition of Tamilnadu had been modified to allow camel to accompany the lonely elephant. It was well past 4 o’clock when we completed the visit-ables around the prahara. Then we visited swami and amman sannidhi’s at a special cost, which allowed us to by-pass most of them in the normal queue. Even this special queue was packed so much that a young lady in front of us fainted in the crowd itself. We had been given less than 3 minutes to sit in front of the deity, where a person sung Thirvasagam beautifully invoking my memory of Panayapatti (my native) Shiva temple oduvar during festival times. Finally we visited the golden lotus pond (porthamarai kulam) and started towards the hotel, after having tender coconut from a muscle man. Museum has an entrance fee of Rs.10 per person and the special entrance queue has a fee of Rs.15 per person. Prachi was not happy as we had to leave the temple in 2 hours, while Bhupesh, who had visited the temple earlier that day, told us that it might take 3 hours. She suspected that there might be something, yet to see. But we, rather I was successful in persuading her. Immediately after reaching the hotel we checked out our rooms and continued our journey towards Tirunelveli which was our next halt.

Madurai – Tirunelveli:
We started from Madurai at 6.00 P.M. As soon as we started our driver confused us, rather confused Prachi saying that we could reach Cape in 5 hours and we will be able to see the sunrise which is claimed to be special there. I had seen sunrise here earlier. It was nothing special for me. It is as good as any sunrise in the east coast of India. Apart from sunrise, our driver might have had his own intentions in making us stay in Cape. As Prachi was desirous to see sunrise from the beginning, she got tempted and we called few hotels in Cape through driver’s reference. But finally we decided to stay at Tirunelveli itself, thinking on moral and comfort context. My father-in-law provided his thought during this confusion, which impacted me a lot. He said, if we cancel the current reservation done at Tirunelveli and stay somewhere in Cape, it is like betraying the Tirunelveli hotel. If we do this, this hotel management will loose trust on telephonic booking in future. Consoling Prachi that we will see sunrise at Rameshwaram, we continued with our planned itinerary.

Tirunelveli – night halt:
We finished our dinner at a highway hotel, which the driver claimed to be one of the good ones on the route, but which turned out to be the only one on the highway. There were a few ‘my’ kind of roadside hotels all through the route, which serve the speciality of this region, the parota, especially the Virudhunagar one. But I had to miss this opportunity due to my companions who would not like such hotels and its servings. My father would be the best company in such situation. We reached Tirunelveli around 10 PM. The hotel looked good from outside and it was no less inside. Though not luxurious, it was very decent. After having a very good sleep, we woke up at 6.30 AM the next morning. The restaurant attached with the hotel was very good and starts serving from early morning. We completed our regular south Indian breakfast of Idli, Dosai and Pongal at 7 o’clock.

Tirunelveli – Kanyakumari:
It was a very scenic route. The highway is under construction. If this work is done, it would be a great experience to travel this route. I never knew this region is so fertile. This region is depicted as one of the dry regions of Tamilnadu. Even the last time I was here before 10 years, it was so hot and dry. Probably, it is due to the winter and the cyclone that had hit these regions a day before. All through the travel, the Western Ghats was forming a backdrop. More to it was the wind mill fans that occupied the entire region around Kavalkinaru. The route from Tirunelveli to Kanyakumari is through a small town called Valliyur and a small but famous village called Mahendragiri, where ISRO has its Liquid Propulsion Research Center. Near Kavalkinaru, the highway bifurcates to Kanyakumari and Nagercoil. We stopped a few miles after Kavalkinaru to relish the beauty of thousands of huge fans in one sight. We took a 360 degree video too. Then we continued our travel to Kanykumari.

Kanyakumari:
We reached Cape around 9.30 AM. The tourist spots here are localized to the end of India. There is shore from where the ‘sangam’ of three seas can be distinguished, there is a memorial dedicated to Gandhi and 2 rock spots a little away from shore, which can be reached by a boat operated by a Tamilnadu government entity, “Poompuhar”. There was a big queue, mostly populated with Gujaratis and Iyappa devotees, which we had to pass through before boarding the boat that took us to Vivekananda rock. We spent enough time there, enjoying the nature, the colors of the sea, waves dashing the rocks and the beautiful breeze. Complementing the beauty was the drizzle, which just started. The meditation center, though not silent is a good place to feel the inner silence. We could spot a sparrow and capture it in our camera which is extinct in Bangalore. We had to get through a little longer queue, which had just grown in length due to the drizzles. Prachi and I went to have a look at Thiruvalluvar statue on the other rock, while my in-laws left to the main-land. I avoided climbing up the stairs to the statue, as I had to remove my shoes. When Prachi was persuading me to remove the shoes, Jayakumar called. He is more accustomed to these places, as his native place is near Nagercoil. I consulted whether we can visit any other place, as we had time. My idea was to visit Mathur Totti palam, which is supposed to be the Asia’s longest and tallest bridge. But he suggested traveling to Padmanabapuram rather than visiting Mathur.

Returning from rock spots, we went along the street bordered by shops, most of them selling sea shells or art paintings and reached the Kanyakumari temple. I had visited this temple earlier, which had nothing special of architectural value. I convinced Prachi and her mom to return from the entrance itself without entering the crowded garba-griha. On the way back, we entered a hotel, assuming that north India meals might be available. Except dosa and south Indian meal, nothing was available. One surprising sight on this entire street was small hotels at every 10m distance. Every hotel with no exception claim to serve all state food – Marathi, Gujarathi, UP, MP, Andra, Punjabi to name few. After having so called lunch, Prachi did some shopping, which she was insisting for. After the shopping Prachi along with her parents went to visit Gandhi Mantapam, while I called up the cab. On the way to Padmanabapuram, we visited the Vivekananda Nagar also.

Padmanabapuram:
My father-in-law was not very convinced to visit an extra place after Kanyakumari. He had set his mind to leave to Tuticorin. He had so many questions regarding the distance that we had to travel further. Though not explicit, it expressed his displeasure due to this extra spot on the agenda, which irritated me to the maximum. It was actually not an extra spot, rather a substitute for Susindram. Susindram is a beautiful, architecturally rich temple between Kanykumari and Nagercoil. We had to skip this temple as there was a function called Margazhli Darisanam, which had attracted a huge crowd. He is not made for travel. This is my conclusion, every time we travel together.

After a long traffic jam due to Susindram temple festival, we reached Padmanabapuram palace around 3 PM, through Thakalai. The region after Nagercoil was entirely fertile and had a Malayali aroma. People in this region are more comfortable with Malayalam than Tamil. The architecture is Kerala style, though these places are in Tamilnadu. Padmanabapuram palace is a kerala style palace, maintained by Kerala government. Prachi and I went around visiting the entire palace, while my in-laws rested in the cab. Prachi was very happy to visit this place. Even for me, this was the first visit to a Kerala style palace.

To Tuticorin:
We started from Padmanabapuram around 4.30 PM towards Tuticorin, where we had booked a hotel for night stay. We had so much of confusion regarding the route. Tuticorin can be reached through Thiruchendur or Tirunelveli. After a lot of discussion between me and the driver, we decided to take the Tirunelveli route, which was better though a little farther. During all this time my father in law was testing my patience with repeated questions on distances. From Tirunelveli, we mistakenly took the route to Thiruchendur. After traveling some 10 km, I doubted the route, as all the boards were showing distance to Thiruchendur, while none showed Tuticorin. I asked the driver to break for tea in a small village, where we found we were on a wrong route, after some consultation. The villagers suggested an interior metal road through some remote villages, which will take us very close to Tuticorin. We took the route, without knowing it was so badly damaged due to the cyclone. But to our surprise, we reached Tuticorin, just 45 minutes from there. I just could not believe that we were at Hotel Sugam, Tuticorin at 8:30 PM. We had a beautiful, big room and not to mention, a very good sleep after a day long travel.

Tuticorin to Rameshwaram:
I inquired the hotel reception about the shortest route to Rameshwaram from Tuticorin. They suggested that the shortest route is through a place called Vilathikulam, which is totally devastated due the current cyclone. So, we took the long route again through Aruppukottai, which is just 55 Km from Madurai. On the way we visited a small temple which had huge statues of Vishnu, Adishesh and Mariamman with bright attractive colours at Singalakarai. Before Aruppukottai, we took a state highway to our right which took us to National Highway 49, through Tiruchuli and Parthibanoor. The entire region was so dry with thorny deciduous forest with few huts and tiled houses here and there. Water was logged at some depressed places, due to cyclone. This is one of the driest and poorest districts of India. People in this region looked so poor from the outlook, but hard working. They was mostly harvesting millets which is a staple source of food this region who can’t afford rice all through the year. They were threshing (removing grains from the plant) pearl millet on the roads.

The next big town after Prathibanoor was Paramakudi. It was around 12:30 noon when we reached Paramakudi. Unfortunately, the tyre got punctured just as we entered Paramakudi. While our drive got it fixed, we had our lunch in the best hotel there, though not very decent. My in-laws had a very bad time, as nothing except typical south Indian meals was available, while Prachi and I relished.

Rameshwaram:
After fixing the tyre and finishing our lunch, we proceeded towards Rameshwaram through Ramanathapuram. White sand on both sides with palm trees all around indicated that we were approaching the shores. On a railway crossing we purchased “Panankezhangu” which is tender stem of Palm tree, grown especially for eating. Prachi and her parents were seeing this for the first time, while I took the pleasure of explaining how it is grown and eaten. Ramanathapuram district is one of the highest growers of Palm tree, where every part of this tree is used in some way of the other. The roofs of huts were made of palm leaves; the fence was made of palm stalk or petiole, palm fruit is eaten when it is ripe and before, the tender extract is used to make alcohol and sugar and more so. With all these narration, we reached the mandampam camp, which is the end point of Indian main land. From here Rameshwaram is connected by Pamban Bridge and a cantilever railbridge, which are both marvelous. We stopped over the bridge to have a look. It is so mammoth standing to tall over the sea. On one side it looks like a vacation place in Europe with so many fishing boats anchored near the shore. The shores are totally covered with Coconut palm.

Ramanathaswamy temple:
Our hotel at Rameshwaram was too good in the sense of its location. It was just adjacent to sea. We can directly dive into the water if we jump from first floor. After refreshing with tea and panankezhangu, we went to the temple. The temple was not very tidy as people walk wet, after taking bath in the 22 kunds or wells, which is considered divine. We didn’t take bath in these wells. We directly proceeded towards the deity for darshan. After darshan, we had a look at the 1000 pillar corridor, which is the longest temple corridor in world. It was magnificent, though not lit properly. After darshan, we visited Sri Ramakrishna Mutt and spent some time on the so called beach. Later in the evening, Prachi, her mom and I went shopping, leaving her father at Gujarathi samaj, where we planned to have our dinner. My mother in law bought some gifts for her friends and relatives, while Prachi bought some ornaments made of sea shells. On the way back, my father called with a trembling voice and gave the message of my grandfather’s demise. Not waiting for dinner at Gujarathi samaj, we finished our dinner at a hotel. I had to discontinue my trip and proceed for the funeral of my grandfather at a place which was 6 hour journey from Rameshwaram.

Rest of the Trip:
The next morning, though not very enthusiastic, Prachi accompanied her parents managing with her Tamil. They had a visit to the shore to see how the sunrises, which they missed at Kanykumari. Then they visited Dhanushkodi, which I m yet to see. The last time I went we did not go till Dhanushkodi. Dhanushkodi is around 20 km from Rameshwaram. Till some distance the normal vehicles are allowed. Later on sands, only the four wheel drive jeeps are allowed. These jeeps take the tourist to the end of India, Dhanushkodi. Srilanka is just around 15 km from here. This place is totally devastated and buried in sand, except a few building which remains. There are some fishermen families that live there. Prachi had purchased some sea shells from the kids who were selling them at cheap cost compared to the cost quoted at the shops around the temple at Rameshwaram.

After Dhanushkodi, they returned back to Madurai and took the same flight in which Bhupesh’s (my colleague) family flew to Bangalore.

Places to stay:
Madurai:

Madurai Residency, 14-15 West Marret Street, Madurai – 625 001

Ph: +91 452 2343140, 2343141, 2343142, 2343143, 2343144

http://www.madurairesidency.com/

There are some good hotels along the same street.
Tirunelveli:

Sri Janakiram Hotels, 30, Madurai Road, Near Nellai Junction, Tirunelveli – 627 001

Ph: +91 462 2331941, 2331942, 2331943

Rameshwaram:

Hotel Sri Saravana, 19A, South Car Street, Rameshwaram – 623 526

Ph: +91 4573 223367

(This hotel does not have a restaurant attached)

Tuticorin:

Hotel Sugam, 207, V.E. Road, Tuticorin – 628 003

ph: +91 461 2328172, 2328272, 2328372, 2328472, 2328572

Distances:

Madurai - Tirunelveli : ~160 KM

Tirunelveli – Kanyakumari : ~80KM

Kanykumari – Nagercoil : 18 KM

Tirunelveli – Tuticorin : ~50 KM

Tuticorin – Arupukkottai : 80

Aruppukkottai – Rameshwaram : ~120