Weekend

It's good to see some of the sights when you get to come to a place like this. Saturday was spent largely just getting over the jet lag (i.e., sleeping), and just lazing around a bit. We had a walk around the beach at Kovalam near the hotel we are staying in, and had a trip up to the lighthouse looking out over the Arabian sea. The view was quite special;

View out over the beach from lighthouse
I KNEW I could hear a goat when I was walking up!

We stopped off in a cafe for a beer - you can't sell beer unless you're in a hotel - so they get round it by just asking you to hide the bottle under the table like this, and then drinking out of mugs...

Then it was a curry for dinner, and an early night so we could get up for our trip out to the southern tip of India on Sunday.

That was really good, and also the hottest day so far. It came courtesy of our taxi driver, Praveen (?). The first stop was a palace - looked like quite a popular destination - everyone was cramming into it and there was a really tiny set of stairs leading up onto the first level. Tiny Stairs + Lots of people = Bad.

Anyway, that obstacle over, the rest of the place was really interesting. It was used by Kings and by the military (apparently the armoury was raided by an English general at some point - the weapons are now in a museum so the room looked quite bare...)

It was pretty hot, so we took advantage of the coconut stall that was right outside the palace. They chop the top off the fruit (and the nut) so you can get to the coconut milk inside with a straw - really nice, and fresh off the tree.

We then got back in the taxi and headed further south to the most southern tip of India, and without a doubt the furthest to the south (and east) I have ever been. At that point, The Arabian Sea, The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal all meet (east to west, in that order). In this picture, you can see the Thiruvalluvar statue - made of solid granite and 133ft tall. We went to look around the Gandhi memorial (which is right next to it), and got a slightly crazed tour guide to show us round - he told us that when the Tsunami hit in December 2004, the wave was right up to the shoulders of that statue - 10,000 people died on the coast there... It was quite surreal.

The Gandhi memorial itself was good - the guide made it though - he was really passionate about it all and called himself the 'Tsunami Watchman' and walked around blowing a whistle at everyone that was in the way. Really made it a good visit and got us all to sign his guest book (not to mention stealing my camera to take loads of pictures).

The last thing we went to visit was this temple. We weren't allowed to take photo's inside. They wouldn't let me or Matt in without taking our shirts off, and Karen had to cover up completely - but once we were in it was probably my highlight of the day. That place had been there and used as a temple for 1000 years - and some of the things in it were over 2000 years old - really good experience - Just a shame I have no photos of it!

To top it all off for the day - this guy was waiting for me on the wall in my room.