Clash of the Titans

We've been in Kanyakumari for almost three days now. It really is the end of India - it feels like we can go no further - the land just stops and the ocean begins. Really, because this is something of a peninsula we get the sense of being surrounded by water wherever we go, except back inland and north. Here is the meeting place of the Bay of Bengal to the east, the Indian Ocean to the south and the Arabian Sea to the west.

The first titanic clash is that of these three great bodies of water with the land. The waves here are rough and crash up on rocks just off the beach. There are many pilgrims who come to bathe in the waters here and they are working to stay upright as the waves come in. And on shore the wind is strong, and almost constant. We have a very nice hotel room, with a balcony but sometimes it's almost impossible to sit out there to read with the wind rushing around flapping pages. How do the crows fly in this? Our windows rattle and bang all night although we leave the door open to get the air circulating. We booked the room as non- aircon, which is fine since there is a good fan and that wind, but there is an A/C unit in the room. Wonder if we switch it on they'll notice. Using it would add 300 Rupees to the cost of the room. (That's $7.50!)

Inland by the way the wind is going to work with a very large windmill electrical generating system. We can see the many many windmills towering over the landscape north of us in the haze of the air.

Clash number two came on waking our first morning - the clash of religions. At 5:15 the Muslim call to prayer began and almost with it began the siren call of loud music from a Hindu temple somewhere in the vicinity. And not to be outdone, the Catholic Church began ringing its bells wildly shortly after. The Hindus won out though - the siren call went on for an hour! Luckily my ear plugs are very good - too bad Geordie can't seem to use them - he depends on silicone ones which just don't do the job.

The Catholic Church wins out in the building category though. We have seen a few temples including one on the shore but the church is huge and dominates the skyline of our view. I wish I knew the correct terminalogy - is it a Romanesque church or a Gothic one? No matter, it's like something out of France or maybe it's Portugal - our lady of lourdes, fatima? There is a tall central spire, and two smaller spires at the front, and a long nave with arched ceilings. The nave is empty though - I am certain the congregation sits on the floor. The main decoration in the church is a large statue of the Virgin Mary with below her a Crucified Christ about half the size.

It's surprising that the Church wins out here. We were in a Hindu temple in Trichy on a short tour we took with a driver. The temple complex has six walls surrounding the main temple at the centre. We were able to walk through the area although we were not able to enter the final temple. There are many minor temples around it though which we were able to view. Inside one area there was a large elephant blessing the congregants who placed a penny in its trunk. Penny in, trunk went up, tapped the head of the person, then trunk over to drop the coin in the pot of the mahout manageing the elephant. (I thought the elephant was perhaps a little crazed though - it never stopped moving its trunk, even when there was no one to make an offering.)

The first three areas of the temple are so large that there are shops and stalls and even people living inside them. That's pretty impressive. We had to walk around the whole area in our bare feet which was quite uncomfortable in the area covered in sand. Today, by the way, we went for a walk in the terrible midday sun, to a village north along the shore where there is another Catholic Church just as big as the one here, although it's insides are not as impressive.

Clash number three is cricket. Our balcony looks over the back of the hotel and directly behind it is a tank. This is a large area for holding water, with steps down to it for bathing - these are common in India - but this one is dry and is host to what appears to be an all day cricket match. From after breakfast until dinner time or later there are a group of young men playing cricket, with real bats and balls but with stones for a goal. We cannot make hide nor hair of the rules. Sometimes they bat and the ball goes off into the wild and they just stand there. Then at other times they bat and the ball goes off into the wild and they run back and forth between goals. No rhyme nor reason is you ask me. We do know that if the batter hits the ball and someone on the other team catches it before it hits the ground the other team is out - we have at least learned that.

Clash the fourth. Out beyond the last bit of land are two small islands. They are connected to the main land by some very rusty looking old scows which take people over to see the monuments to two of South India's heroes. Vivekananda has a temple complex, in dark stone, domed, which marks the spot where this holy man swam out one day and spent time meditating until he decided to take off on a pilgrimage around India to take his views on peace within the Hindu idea. He is obviously revered here.

The second island has the mightier statue - this one is exactly 133 feet tall and represents the major Hindu poet Thiruvalluvar who wrote a very famous piece with exactly 133 verses. We saw his poems written on a wall when we were on our tour out of Varanasi sometime ago now. Every verse. Of course they are in Hindi so we don't understand a word.

Back on the mainland there is one other Titan, whose monument we visited yesterday. It is the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, whose ashes were ceremoniously scattered in the water of the seas here. It is not a large place and it's in a very pastel shade of pink decorated with white, and in a very odd building, something like an old movie theatre with a rounded roof line and a squat tower next to it. But there is a hole in the rood where on October 2, Gandhi's birthday, the sun shines down on the place where his ashes were kept for the day before scattering.

We are here for one more day - then we are off to spend a week in Kovalam, a beach town in the state of Kerala. I imagine our next message will be from there. Until then, you can always get out your atlases and check the neighbourhood out.