Visited in January 2020
Kerala, a single state having so many landscapes to offer; be it mountains, tea estates, beaches & backwaters. This time my travel love took me to this charismatic state, so here I am sharing my 4 days trip report of Kerala with Kanyakumari.
Day 1: We started our journey from Delhi airport with 7am flight and reached Trivandrum around 10:30am. After collecting our bags, we went to the taxi counter which is located just outside the exit gate of the airport. AC Sedan for Kanyakumari costed us Rs. 3240 and we reached Kanyakumari around 2pm with a stop-over at interstate check point. Our pre-booking was at Hotel Sea View, so after a quick check-in & freshening-up we ordered lunch from the hotel restaurant. Since sun was very harsh at that time so we decided to rest a bit and explore the city in evening around 5pm or so.
Kanyakumari is a small city with all tourist attractions nearby.
We went to Triveni Sangam, which is confluence of three seas namely Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea & Indian Ocean. We went to Kanyakumari Temple after sangam visit as sangam is just behind the temple. It was a quick darshan as there were less people.
One can have urgent darshan by paying 20 per head. Also, gents have to remove their shirts and baniyan for entering the goddess room. Flower and prasad is available outside temple.
We went back to our hotel after darshan as it was late evening and rest of the tourist places could be visited in day time only. Had dinner again in hotel room; sitting beside huge window and enjoying lovely views of sea, Vivekananda rock memorial, Thiruvallur Statue and Kanyakumari city.
It was a full moon that night and reflection of same felt magical on sea, cold breeze added magic to the moment. We sat behind that window, gazing outside and had some chit chats till late night.
Day 2: This day hotel provided us bed tea/coffee as complimentary, so I woke up with the doorbell for tea at around 5:30am. There was also some prayer going-on (on loudspeaker) in a nearby church which waked us in the morning. Since I already had to wake-up for sunrise, so I got freshened up and went to hotel terrace for witnessing the same.
Watching sunrise is very popular or must thing to do in Kanyakumari, hence there was a huge rush around sea for watching sunrise. Luckily our hotel terrace provided that view without any extra effort. But unfortunately, we couldn’t watch sunrise at the scheduled time due to clouds, but once it came above the clouds it was beautiful.
After sunrise I came back and got ready for hotels buffet breakfast around 8am. Hotel again impressed us with the variety of breakfast spread they had. Soon we filled our belly with heavy breakfast and proceeded for the ferry ride. Here we bought ticket of Rs. 200 per head for avoiding queue at the jetty. The waiting time for ferries is very minimal due to the bigger size and lesser distance ferries have to cover. It took us to Vivekananda Rock Memorial which is in middle of sea.
Swami Vivekananda attained enlightenment on the rock, so the place is built in his honour. There is statue of Swami Vivekananda on one side and goddess Kanyakumari temple on other side. Views from this place are stunning as water is all around.
We purchased ticket of Rs.10 for visiting the memorial. Little bit climbing is required to reach these two places located in front of each other.
One wheelchair is available at this place without any additional charge. We took it for my mother.
We took the ferry again from this place to reach the jetty. There is poet “Thiruvallur” statue also next to the Vivekananda rock memorial but entry to this place is not allowed as our ferry took us back to jetty. Now was the time to go back to our hotel, pack our bags and say a final good bye to this last corner of India.
Our next stop was Poovar back waters, we reached there around 2pm as its 65 km from Kanyakumari. Here we hired a boat for backwater cruise, which took us to Golden Sand Beach while crossing through water forest. It dropped us to one of the restaurant boat anchored on the river. We had our lunch there in middle of the sea with some good music. On our return journey we saw some floating cottages also of Poovar Island Resort.
Our next stop from here was Kovalam which is just 30 min (19 km) away from Poovar. We went through two hotels here and finalized on one with sea view from balcony. From here we could watch all the activities of Hawah Beach. After resting for some time we went through Hawah Beach & light house beach which are beside each other. This entire seaside have many options for staying. We watched the sunset and went to a small rock on the beach. We came back to our rooms late evening and after some chit chats we ordered our dinner in the room itself. Meanwhile we also booked cab for our next day excursion of Kumarakom and Munnar.
I woke up early to witness the daily life of locals (my best part of the day).
Here I witnessed fisherman taking out their boats in the sea for catching fishes. Some people taking out the fishing nets from sea which they might have left in the sea previous day. Beach bed owners spreading their beds and locals, tourists jogging or walking around both the beaches. I can never get bored of beaches, whatever time I spend its always less.
But soon I winded up and went to the room for getting ready for buffet breakfast. Our cab arrived at the decided time and we checked-out from our room and proceeded towards our next destination Kumarakom. The place is around 190 km from Kovalam and we took around 5 hours to reach the destination.
Here I got a real shock as I planned a houseboat tour in backwaters of Kumarakom but after reaching the place, the ferry owners said all the houseboat are booked as cruise starts from 11am. But after lots of googling and calling finally I got a houseboat which took us to backwater tour for 2.5 hrs as no houseboats are allowed to sail in the backwaters after 6pm. This was a real saviour as I cannot imagine my Kerala trip without houseboat tour.
Our boat took us through narrow lanes of backwaters to complete bigger area where we saw some Chinese fishing nets. The boat also had two rooms with attached bathroom for staying with complete furnishing of bed, almirah, side sofa, mirror and etc.A small kitchen is also available on back side of boat from where we had our tea and snacks for the day.
This was a beautiful journey where you can spend some quiet time with your thoughts. The cold breeze adds to the comfort.
Again, we hopped in our cab and proceeded towards Munnar which is again around 170 km and took 5 hours for reaching. We took just a single stop on the way for dinner and reached Munnar at 12 in the midnight. Most of the Munnar hotels I had in my list was booked, so our driver saved us here by booking a homestay and I must say it was a good idea as the homestay was very neat and clean and most importantly it was separate as the house owner lived on first floor and gave us ground floor (3 BHK) for staying. Tea and hot water was available in the morning and restaurant for breakfast was nearby, so we checked-out and went to the restaurant through our cab which was booked till Kochi drop.
Day 3: After breakfast we went for Munnar site-seeing, tea gardens, tea museum, Mattupetty dam, Kundla dam and on the way to Kochi we saw Cheeyapara waterfall.
Its beautiful feeling to go through so much of greenery of tea gardens. The whole way looks beautiful and mesmerising.
We reached Kochi hotel around 7:30 pm. We booked this hotel near Kochi airport as we had early morning flight (6am) for next day. Since I was so tired, I just went to bed and slept in no time.
We left the hotel at 4am by a pre-booked cab and reached the airport in 5-10 min. It was a 3-hour flight and we reached Delhi around 10am. This was a complete changeover from a hot to cold weather.