After reaching Kanyakumari I just made a decision to sort of leave it there on the day 9 post. In actuality there was a day 9+ adventure after the 10s of selfies at the point. :)
We met G, who congratulated us and said when he saw the 3 flags from the different countries he was a bit choked up. G was a great fourth Scorcher and it would have been much harder to do with out his help. Matty, Shruti and I kept saying from Day 1 how lucky we were to have G as our driver and wingman. So we headed off to have a celebratory lunch, at the "Hotel Sea View" where we ate waaaay too much. Carrot Halwa was flowing ... along with delicious parathas. There was no sea view from the restaurant, but with the amount we were eating, i don't think we would have noticed any way.
On the way I saw a sign for Jesus cabs. I was thinking if there was ever a cab company I needed a name for and i was based in India and based in a very catholic part of the country, i might choose jesus cabs as the name as well. :)
blue boxes are where we went
We then visited the Our Lady of Ransom shrine. I have to understand why it is called that. I thought ransoms were for when you kidnapped someone? :) website: http://www.ransomchurchkanyakumari.org
Then we visited the Padmanabhapuram Palace which I wasn't able to visit the last time as i ran out of money and the ATMs weren't working! LOL :) crazy ... I know. So they explicitly told us we could not take pictures. I don't know how the hell Shruti and Matt took so many pics! I didn't even see them snapping away! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhapuram_Palace
Believe it or not, this is a toilet. :)
Matty loves doing this ... who am I to judge?
We then headed to what we thought was going to be the Niagara falls of India, but in reality, Matt was splashed more by the cows in the road. :) This is a pic of Thiruparappu waterfalls. I think we just came at a lull in the season. Ive seen other pictures where the water is gushing like a themepark.
what we saw
what i found on the internet.
We made it to the hotel, a quick drone flight, dinner and then we passed out. Day 10 would be a ride to Madurai en route to Chennai to the flight home.
Ride Stats
Strava Route: https://www.strava.com/activities/845039933
Miles: 46.2
Total Time: 5:20:25
Total Ride Time: 4:03:01
Pace per Mile: 11.4
Start: Manapad, IN
End: Kanyakumari, IN
For me personally i was looking forward to this day, but also dreading it. Today was the day we reach Kanyakumari. The southern most point in India. I had been here before years ago via cab and I was only there for a couple of hours. The last time I was there i did the typical things, went to the Island, Gandhi museum and tht was about it. This time would be different.
We planned for an early start as we had gotten burned a few days prior and didn't want a repeat and there were a few sites we wanted to check out. We had short miles to push out compared to other days. We estimated about 46 and were right on the money as it turned out we put in 46.2. We woke at 5-ish to a light rain and cool, but humid conditions. It was by no means "cool" like we had prior to the days north of Ramanathapuram.
We ate some bananas and bread and then pointed ourselves south. The start was nice as we had newly paved roads, we stuck to the main highways to avoid any muddy conditions like we had on day 6. The usual music was playing in the morning, but this morning at 5AM all of the church bells went off, the roosters were up and the church across the road was projecting something in Tamil.
Eventually we hit a good few stretches of unpaved roads and a number of climbs. Just out of the corner of my eye i noticed something to the left as we were cruising and we were about 100 feet from the ocean! We stopped, turned around and quickly took a detour to the sea. the views were fantastc and of course we met some local people who asked about what we were doing and where we are going, how the gears worked on our bikes [ they proceeded to count the gears on matty's bike as i was watching them. [ matt and Shruti went to check out the stone pier that was made ]. They counted the back and then i pointed out the front chain rings. :)
rap pose
After a bunch of selfies, handshakes and well wishes, we were back on our way. We hit a considerable amount of downhill, the weather cleared up slightly as we progressed and was a bit of sun and a bit of overcast. We did face some wind as we headed down, but 80% of it was at our backs or back-ish. A uy on a motorcycle carrying some crates actually stopped us and gave us these 3 nice indian breakfast treats for free. Just out of the blue. The people of India have to be some of the kindest in the world. 90% of the people we saw waved at us, said "hi ... how...are...you" with a pause between each word :) Asked us what our "native" was ... or our country. Really fantastic.
I know Shruti told me 3x what this was called, but i forget. Something starting with a U :)
We passed some cool wind farms which were massive and could see an outline of gorgeous mountains in the distance. We would see more of them from the hotel tomorrow. We started taking pictures of the markers and anything that said welcome to Kanyakumari.
matty is the master of the selfie
We finally hit the bottom of the country. I recognized exactly where we were from 4.5 years ago and knew where to go. We headed down to the tip, bikes and all, people were staring and we celebrated. High fives, we took out the country flags i had bought for us all [ i dont know how they sent me a smaller USA flag ] :) and spent the next 15-20 minutes soaking it in. It was fantastic, gratifying, kinda sad that 10 months of planning and preparation and the cycling the last week and a half was coming to an end, but it was so cool to have done it. We did it safely, minimal issues, we saw some great things, spent time with super nice people and made an accomplishment that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives.
I love this pic. At the point and looking toward Vivekananda Rock Memorial
After the day break in Thoothikudi, we set ourselves for Manapad. I was espeially looking forward to this because the place was called the Manaapad beach resort. I hadnt looked at all of the reservatins, Matty and Shruti had done all of the set up on the accommodations. I just flipped through and said if i liked the hotel or not. It was nice being surprised when we arrived each morning.The day's ride would be the shortest of the trip at about 36miles. After a previous messy day we decided to move off of the small backroads to more of the main highways. The highways in this part of India, for the most part, max out at about 2 lanes per side and have an ample shoulder which scootys, motor bikes, cows, dogs, goats, Indian bicyclists and now the Bombay Scorchers use as a bike lane. It was quite
comfortable to ride with minimal traffic. We had smooth roads, not too much wind, no real climbs and we were surrounded on both sides by banana plantations for a part of the ride.
Ride Stats - shortest ride
Strava Route: https://www.strava.com/activities/845040635
Miles: 37.3
Total Time: 5:49:37 - this is because we stopped at the temple for a while
Total Ride Time: 3:28:41
Pace per Mile: 10.7
Start: Thoothkudi, IN
End: Manapad, IN
It is quite nice that in the mornings people play music :)
On the way we stopped by Sri Subrahmanya Swami Temple in Tiruchendur where G orchestrated getting us the VIP pass and we sat for the pouring of milk on the temple's main deity. We had to take our shirts off [ just the guys :) ] and i gave away all my rupees to some local kids. If i could have taken those 4 kids home with me i would have. We also met a transvestite begger. I had seen them before in Bangalore while driving back from a temple. I remember saying, "wow that is one ugly indian lady" when i first saw one last April. The guys corrected me and told me it was a Hijra ...basically a transvestite community with a leader and they go off and beg for money or start
trouble. They are known for their clap. We gave he/she a solid 10Rs.
The temple was great and we saw a milk pouring ceremony being performed. We received flower wreaths for our necks and markings on our foreheads.I was i nthe temple and one of the swamy's asked what country i was from. I replied "America" as saying "USA" typically got lost in translation. As soonas i said "America" the guy said "Trump!!" and raised his thumbs up. I guess the trump train has rolled 8500 miles to south east india :)
When i had visited India for the first time in 2012, i remember kids asking me for a "skoolpeh". I was like what is a "skoolpeh"? "skoolpeh, skoolpeh" So i asked them what is that and eventually worked out that they wanted a pen they could use for school. So this trip, again a few kids asked for skoolpehs and Shruti bought a couple of packs and was handing them out in the morning. The kids were amazed when they saw the bikes, amazed seeing an Indian gal cycling in western dress and so happy to just get the pens. The looks on their faces was priceless. I have been trying to think of a nickname for Shruti as she gave out the pens, something like the Johnny Appleseed story in America when he went along and planted apple trees. If anyone thinks of a good name, please coment below. :)
We rolled in to Manapad around 12:30 or so and it is the most Catholic little towns i have every been to, possibly that exists in the universe. There are 3 massive churches for probably a few hundred people who thrive on tourism or fishing. Every house has catholic pictures of Jesus or Mary. There is a special cave there was Francis Xavier carved out of stone on the seashore with a well that gives pure fresh water feet off of the ocean.
Trying to scare matty boy ... this was a recurring theme :)
10ft from our homestay
panoramic
We checked in to the hotel which was more of a bed & breakfast type places, referred to as a homestay. It was great. The staff was great. We had lunch and set off for some site seeing since we arrived so early and the 36 miles didnt knock us out. Hit the church which was feet from our place, the beach, basically said hello to the whole town and then came back to the house. I was feeling a bit anxious and wanted to check out the lighthouse and the church on the hill so while the rest of
the scorchers napped, i slapped my cycling clothes back on and around 4-ish i set out again to see what i could see. :) The main man of the house, Cruz, who is 29 with a recently born young girl set out after he saw me leave on his motorbike and he took me around. Such a nice guy. We talked about weightlifting as he was in to it as well and he showed me all around the town. Some really steep climbs, but it was worth the extra effort. Back to the hotel, a quick drone flight, dinner and then we had G drive us to the places i cycled to saw the scorchers could get the nighttime experience as well.
If we had unlimited time, no responsibilities and no job, today could have been used as a model day. An early start, a medium sized ride, good lunch, a few sites
to see and a nice place to stay.
Tomorrow will be our final ride of the trip.... LETS GO DAY 9!!! Kanyakumari here we come!!!
i look about 500lbs bigger than shruti
Cruz and Matty droninnnnn
Me and Cruz were like BFFs. We took about 75 selfies and talked about weight lifting. Cool dude :)
We met G, who congratulated us and said when he saw the 3 flags from the different countries he was a bit choked up. G was a great fourth Scorcher and it would have been much harder to do with out his help. Matty, Shruti and I kept saying from Day 1 how lucky we were to have G as our driver and wingman.
On the way I saw a sign for Jesus cabs. I was thinking if there was ever a cab company I needed a name for and i was based in India and based in a very catholic part of the country, i might choose jesus cabs as the name as well. :)
On the way I saw a sign for Jesus cabs. I was thinking if there was ever a cab company I needed a name for and i was based in India and based in a very catholic part of the country, i might choose jesus cabs as the name as well. :)
