Visited in Dec 2023
Our itinerary was Thiruvanantapuram and Kanyakumari. It was a short trip considering the availability of the entire family.
We started off in train from Thrissur at night and reached Thiruvanantapuram - Kerala's capital city at around 530 am. We had hired a traveller for the entire trip. After freshening up in a day room, we visited the famous Pazhavangadi Ganapaty Temple, followed by Attukal Bhagawaty Temple. Attukal temple is famous for the great Pongala festival, where women from all around Kerala flock in to take part in the Pongala. As per our plan, we wanted to visit Sri Padmanabha Swamy temple as well, but it was too crowded with long queues to enter the temple. So, we decided to make it to the temple next day and headed towards other attractions. On our way, we visited a Parasuraman Temple also.
The next destination was Azhimala Shiva temple. This temple is situated on a hill facing the Arabian Sea and offers great views from the top. There is a huge statue of Lord Shiva and is a must visit.
Poovar Lake is an all time favourite spot for tourists. There are lush mangroves all around, and a boating through the narrow stream through the mangroves and eventually reaches the estuary to wider lake and finally the Arabian Sea. We can hire boat which houses 7 pax in one. We took 2 boats and had a good time seeing the sights around - flora and fauna. There are a few luxury resorts by the side of the lake, many floating restaurants also.
Shuchindram is an ancient Shiva temple and is an architecture marvel from the early centuries. The temple and its surroundings is a great example to the unmatched skill of ancient Indian sculptors. We were happy to have the service of a local guide who explained about the temple, each and every corner of it, legends and stories around the temple and it was very interesting.
We checked in to our hotel in Kanyakumari by late evening. Soon after checking in, we walked towards the beach road to experience the evening market vibes, had dinner and slept off.
Kanyakumari, also known as Cape Comorin, is considered as the southern tip of Indian mainland. We can see the three great oceans of Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean confluence here.
It was an early start of the day to the Sunrise view point at Kanyakumari beach. As it was cloudy, we couldn't witness the sunrise, but had a good time by the sea at the early morning hours.
We visited the Devi Kanyakumari temple which is located very close to the sea, is almost 3000 years old. The Goddess has a beautiful nose ring and it is said that once a ship which got lost in the sea, could find its way to the shore seeing the bright sparkle of the nose ring of the Goddess Kanyakumari!
After breakfast, we queued up to purchase tickets for the boat trip to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. This rock is situated a few metres off the mainland into the sea. There are frequent boat services which takes tourists to the rock memorial and back. Swami Vivekananda, a great Indian scholar, swam the sea and climbed this rock almost a 100 years ago to meditate here. There is a large room which holds the statue of Swami and a meditation hall as well. Next to it, there is a spot where we can see the foot print of Goddess. We can also see the huge statue of the great Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar next to Vivekananda Rock Memorial.
Post lunch, we drove our way back to Thiruvanantapuram. We stopped over to visit Padmanabhapuram Palace, which is owned and governed by Govt of Kerala, although situated in Tamil Nadu. It is a huge palace in traditional Kerala architecture, beautiful and well maintained. We can visit the rooms, see the royal possessions, enjoy the architecture and see a lot of paintings, sculptures etc inside the palace. The famous song 'Oru murai vandu...' of superhit Malayalam movie Manichitrathazhu was shot at the Saraswati mandapam inside this palace.
We headed back to Thiruvanantapuram and visited the majestic Sri Padmanabha Swamy Temple. A trip to the capital city would be incomplete without offering prayers to Sri Padmanabha. The temple complex is huge with the residing deity Sri Maha Vishnu in his reclining posture on the serpent Ananta (Adi Sesha). A very unique aspect of this temple is that the devotee has to pass by three shrines to have a full view of the deity. It is a truly divine experience to be at the temple and offer prayers. The city itself got its name after this temple.
We checked in to our hotel, had dinner and slept. We had booked Vande Bharat train to Thrissur and the journey back was really relaxing and quite fast as well. We reached Thrissur in just 4 hours compared to 6 hours plus in other trains. Well, interesting to see the growth of infrastructure and facilities in India and quite proud to be an Indian!
Street Sights:
Almost all the places, we see the impact of Digital India and the extensive use of UPI for payments. Even the small street vendors use UPI for transactions! Isn't that Incredible India by all means?
Travelling is fun, travelling with your loved ones makes it special!
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