The Tip on Tiptoe

I was hoping to sleep in, at least today, but noooo. It’s impossible because my soon to be ex dorm mates feel the burning need of exchanging cooking recipes at 6.45 AM! Okay, maybe not cooking recipes; what you usually exchange is travel plans and ideas.

I sigh. I get up. I pack. I leave. On the bus again. And in ‘just’ under 4 hours I’m at the southernmost point of continental India, Kanyakumari, a place where you can see the seas meet (well, seas, oceans, bays, whatever - Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean). And I get to go by ferry on some heavily statue-ed islands (more like rocks, for that matter), and I get to be guided through the Gandhi memorial by this elderly guard (who asks me for money for clarifying the 10 framed photographs representing crucial points in Gandhi’s life), but most of all, I get to see the sun set over three seas (well, seas, oceans, bays, whatever). Moreover, I get to see it without a charged battery in my camera. Which only shows one more time that any camera will die when you need it most. Still, it was absolutely lovely. As was the 180 rupee beer I had while waiting for the next train to come.

So, after two busses, one rickshaw, one train (short trip) and another one (full-nighter), which is supposed to come sometime soon, I really want to lay down somewhere, just to remember the feeling of being horizontal, which I don’t think I’ll experience anytime soon.

Well, this is the slow, really slow train to Madurai, which not only looks like it’s never ending (passenger trains have innumerable carts), but feels like it’s never going to get there. It’s not bad, really, if you count out the mini-cockroaches, but there comes a time in the day when you really wish for privacy in a land where they don’t even have a word for that. And you also (belatedly) wish for some sunscreen or some after-sun soothing lotion, which would attenuate the familiar aches of facial sun burning, a thing which I get when being utterly unpredictable and totally irresponsible, by walking towards the sun, but hoping you don’t become red like Little Red Riding Hood’s hood (remember the sun setting in Kanyakumari? Well, you have to get to the view point somehow and I obviously chose the direct route). What happens is I become red. Glowingly so. Because Western skin just doesn’t have a switch to turn off sun burning. At least my skin doesn’t.

To sum up: the way to Madurai is long. And aching. And red.

Oh, and that black spot you can see in all the pictures? It's in all the pictures in lovely Kanyakumari because I didn't have the slightest idea it was there!