Kanyakumari looms large in India’s imagination – and with good reason. It is the southernmost tip of mainland India and is the meeting point of the three seas surrounding India: the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. If you stand on land’s edge here and let your imagination run wild, you can actually ‘feel’ you are at the tip of the world, and envision these three great swirling bodies of water merging into each other right at your feet. Then your coming to Kanyakumari has not been in vain.
For most tourists who come to Kanyakumari, it is a place of worship. They come in droves to genuflect before Kanyakumari (literally, the Maiden Goddess), and the gigantic statues for Swami Vivekananda who meditated here, and Thiruvalluvar, the pithy Tamil poet – all of them on the seafront.
Kanyakumari also offers spectacular sunrises and sunsets. It’s not everywhere that you can watch the sun rise from the sea in the morning and. Later in the evening, plunge back into it. Take off to Suchindram, a charming temple. Or pack a picnic and head for the Dutch fort at Vattakottai, with its natural beach.
