Day 9 : We did it!

 

 

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

i love this pic :D