Day 1: Cleanliness Comes

The sun had to rise, regardless of SF and Oneiro rising earlier or later. But, we being we, rose earlier, got the cameras ready, rushed to the terrace to welcome the sun. There has to be something going wrong when everything else is right. No, the sun rose, but behind the clouds. The sunlight penetrated, making Kanniyakumari brighter and brighter by the minute, but no sign of the sun! Hide and Seek!

A nuisance called Sekar [name not changed], who happened to be the attendant in the hotel that we stayed in, seized this opportunity and sang songs which we didn't want to listen to, spoke about stuff we were least interested in, but made us tea, which we were dying for. And then, just like that we got ready and headed to the beach.

We saw the beach from atop the view tower, from the land, standing on the rocks, sitting by the shore, and sitting at a hotel, which offered some lip smacking dosas. Oh, I didn't tell you, the view from atop the view tower made me hum a super hit kannada song, which roughly translates to expressing one's love as direct and as possible in the three golden words. Yeah, for me to sing such a song, imagine the view! Breath taking was the word. (Now I wonder, why I didn't sing "take my breath away". Hm…)

Now, I don't know if we chose the clean part of the beach or cleanliness just came, but it did happen. The water was clean – green near the shore, blue farther away. By the shore, we played with the sand, and exclaimed it was beautiful and all that, and by the time another song could escape from me, hunger set in. We had to catch the 1030 to Trivandrum. It was 0845. Finishing things in a hurry, we set off to the station.

The sight of the railway station caught us by surprise. It resembled a thirumana mandapam (maduve chatra, marriage hall if you like it). But the outer appearance was only a camouflage. In my 26 years of railway station visiting experience, this has been the very best railway station. No peddlers, no people, no dirt, no grime, no nothing. Cleanliness just came. It was an experience by itself. We had the whole super clean bogie to us.

Tired and sleep deprived, we slept in the train and woke up at Trivandrum, which welcomed us, with renewed vigor. We treated ourselves to a nice and elaborate lunch in a luxury hotel, which made us sleepy as well. The train we got into wasn't exactly comfortable, but we aren't here on a pleasure holiday, filled with luxury, you see, so we settled in. There began the 39 hour journey.