The Grand South India Ride - 25th Dec 2016 to 6th Jan 2017: Day 5, 29th Dec. 2016

The fifth day of our ride was the one we had longed for. Today we were going to the land’s end on the eastern coast of India, Dhanushkodi. Once a quaint village, Dhanushkodi was washed away by a cyclone in the mid 60’s and since then it has not been inhabited. Now, only a few local fisherman live there in makeshift cottages. The town is called Ghost town.

Dhanushkodi Panorama

Today, we were firstly supposed to rise early and visit the temple to have a look at the architecture, which none of us managed after the earlier days ride..But we all woke up in time so that we could see the sunrise from Dhanushkodi.

Our bags were already packed the earlier night and in a few minutes we loaded them on our bikes. And here came the first surprise..One of our bikes tyre was flat. Well, we had already equipped ourselves for such an emergency. We had a USB compressor and my bike had a charger fitted to it..The testing of this system was successful... so in a few minutes we were on the road towards Dhanushkodi. It was cloudy and had rained at a few places. The drive to Dhanushkodi was of roughly 20 kms.

Dhanushkodi is a narrow strip of land in between the sea and as such is very windy. We had to drive carefully as we were literally shifting due to the wind.

We reached the entry to the last strip of land only to find out that it was closed to tourists and special permission was needed to go to the farthest point. After a lot of convincing we got through and were finally riding on a road with sea waves crashing on both sides.

This patch of the road is awesome…7 kms of spotless, flat, straight tarmac as good as, or rather better than, any damn runway without any other vehicles. Blue sea on both sides…gushing wind and huge crashing waves. At the farthest point an Ashoka Pillar has been recently constructed. The sight is just mesmerizing.

Runway..is it?

Ashoka Pillar

From here Sri Lanka is just 20 kms away…we could actually manage to get signal of a cellular network in Sri Lanka.

The Convoy

We parked our bikes and walked the last few meters to the sea from the farthest drivable point on the southeastern coast of India.

Sunrise from Dhanushkodi

Lands End

The sea here is clean…peaceful yet aggressive..Unluckily for us, there was a lot of cloud cover and we couldn’t see the Sunrise. We devoured the beauty of the moment and left for Rameswaram.

Dhanushkodi...Done!!

Once in Rameswaram, we had to get the punctured tyre fixed. But no one was ready to touch the Royal Enfield. Finally we got a young chap who was so skilled that he fixed the tyre in a few minutes. Half the team had gone ahead by then to search for some breakfast. And again, it started to rain. This time we stopped till the rain stopped..and then started our journey to Pamban. IN between we had some tea and snacks.

We had the last look at the Pamban bridge and finally entered the Indian Mainland. From here our road led us to Kanyakumari.

The initial road that we had decided was along the eastern coast. But with our earlier experience and the uncertainity of rains, we decided to go for a longer route. Though longer, this route was a national highway and thus we could catch up speed. We were driving like crazy now..402 kms to cover. We did fare well..By afternoon, we had covered a huge distance. We wanted to reach Kanyakumari before the sunset as this is the only place in India from where you can see the Sun rise as well as set in the Sea. We were going to be in Kanyakumari only for one night and so this was our only chance.

An expansive Wind Turbine Field guards the entry to Kanyakumari. It is an experience to watch this engineering marvel.

The day had started very early today and we had also kept our speed constant owing to which we reached Kanyakumari well in time. After some relaxed time in the comfort of the AC Room, we left to see the Vivekanand Rock, the confluence of the 3 seas and the Sunset.

As it was the peak of the tourism season, we were greeted with hordes of people. The Ferry to Vivekanand Rock Memorial was cancelled due to uncertain weather conditions. So we were a bit demoralized. But we had a lot to see. We immediately left for the confluence of the three seas.

Vivekanad Rock

To stand at the tip of land and see 3 seas stretch into the vastness in front of you is a feeling that cannot be expressed in words. But as it happens, this feeling was dampened a bit due to the chaos of people at the Triveni Sangam point.