A joyful trip to Kanyakumari and Trivendrum

Earlier this month, we got to know about the Access India Convention, a meet up of visually impaired people, who are members of the Access India mailing list and we have planned to along with another couple, Kameshwari Kiran Kumar, who are good friends to us. We have booked our tickets and there our excitement is started.

It so happened, our scheduled flight for 11^th November has been cancelled due to operational reasons and we were booked on the next day morning flight by Kingfisher airlines. So we had to wake up as early as 2 am (IST) and get to the airport. Again, the flight got delayed by a few minutes. We finally reached Trivendrum just before the inaugural session of the convention.

Convention was inaugurated by Prof. Veera Raghavan, an eminent professor and delivered an excellent keynote. It was pleasure to meet several good friends Kiran Kaja, Dipendra Manocha, Harish Kotian, Sudhir, Ramana and several others.

Then we checked into Hotel Prashanth, a very excellent hotel and towards the evening we had been to the Kovalam Beach! Wow, what a awesome place that is. We all enjoyed in the water and spent quite a bit of time. It so happened, we wanted to have a dinner around the beach, but we did not have any cash in hand but all electronic cards and neither the hotels accept the cards and there was no ATM nearby. So we had to come back and have our dinner. Although they took a lot of time to serve our food, noteworthy is that the food quality and the taste is superb! We all loved it.

Next day mroning, we took a train to Kanyakumari, which is about 3 hours journey; we had a great time, talking among us, seeing the nature and the three hours just gone without our notice!

We have checked into Hotel Samudra. I must say the tariff of the hotels both at Trivendrum and Kanyakumari are indeed worth and we are so much satisfied. Rooms are so spacious and the rooms we got were sea facing and we could absolutely see the Vivekananda Rock Memorial right from our room. We quickly had awesome food at Hotel Saravana and got into boad to visit Vivekananda Rock Memorial.

. It was just about 15 minutes boat ride and we have reached the Rock Memorial. Wow! What a nice place. We enjoyed every moment being there, at the temple, at meditation room. It was indeed awesome experience. We bought a couple of books that reads the values thought by Shri. Swami Vivekananda and his history.

. Unfortunately, due to the clouds, we couldn’t see the sunset and return to the hotel. Oh! Yes, again, we had a great food. We decided to wake early in the morning and see the sun raise and we made it! That was totally unforgettable experience.

Then we had spent some good time at the Beach and then returned to Trivendrum. We wanted to visit Shri. Padmanabha swami temple and while we enter the temple, we were asked to get the procedure from the Temple’s office and personnel at the temple office are not at all helpful, respectful, not responsive at all and we had to return without the Darshan. In the evening we had been to Kovalam beach again and enjoyed almost couple of hours in the water. Oh! Yes, we originally scheduled to return on 14^th November, night itself, but Kingfisher’s flight got cancelled again and we were offered stay in a hotel and booked in the next day morning flight. Even that flight got cancelled and thanks to Kingfisher’s staff, we got booked on another airline and back home with smile.

Some more pictures of our trip: