Kanyakumari

At the southern tip of India, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean meet, and the town is named for the goddess who stands guard over the place. Kanya Kumari, the virgin, is said to have waited here to marry Shiva, who never arrived; the wedding feast, the story goes, turned to the coloured sand you still find on the beach. Her temple stands at the water's edge, its sea-facing door kept shut for all but a handful of days in the year.

In December 1892 a young monk swam out to a rock offshore and sat there for three days. Swami Vivekananda left India the following year for Chicago, and the memorial built on that rock in 1970 is now the town's most visited site. Beside it stands the Thiruvalluvar statue — 133 feet, one for each chapter of the Tirukkural — and since December 2024 a glass-floored footbridge links the two islands.

Until 1956 Kanyakumari belonged to Travancore, and the district still looks and eats half-Malayali. The best evidence is Padmanabhapuram Palace, 35 km north, the old Travancore royal seat: teak, rosewood and mica windows, a council chamber cooled by its own polished floor, and still maintained by the Kerala government though it now stands in Tamil Nadu.

The cooking of Nanjil Nadu, as the region calls itself, is coconut and tamarind and the sea. Meen kuzhambu, sour and red, is the daily fish curry; aviyal and erissery come with the vegetarian meals; prawns and squid are fried by the shore. The jaggery here is palm jaggery, karupatti, and it ends up in coffee and sweets. At Chitra Pournami, the April or May full moon, the setting sun and rising moon can be seen on opposite horizons at once, and the beach fills to watch.

The ferry to the rock starts around eight, and by nine the queue can take hours; your Saint will tell you to be in line before the counter opens. Do the rock, cross the glass bridge to the statue, then come back for a late breakfast. Sunrise is best from the beach or a rooftop, not from the crowded ghat; on cloudy mornings the light comes late and soft. Men remove their shirts to enter Kumari Amman, and the temple is busiest just after dawn. The Gandhi Memorial, where his ashes were kept before immersion, is built so that sunlight falls on one spot at noon each 2 October.

The beaches either side of the town are working shores, with fishing villages that took the full force of the 2004 tsunami. Walk through them with respect and don't photograph people at work uninvited. Don't buy shell and coral souvenirs — they come from the reefs. Dress modestly at the temple and the memorial, and leave the rocks as clean as you found them.

From the end of India, the most natural journey is up the other coast. Rameshwaram, on its island across the Pamban channel, is the other great shore-temple of the Tamil south — pilgrimage, sea air and a ghost town at land's end.