Text and Photo: Sunil Gupta

Day 70 – Nov 7 – Kovalam – Kanyakumari – Tirunelveli

As soon as we got up, we were packing our stuff knowing that we might have to again ride in the night, which we were trying to avoid for the last few days, though unsuccessfully so; and yeah, one good thing happened and it was that we decided that we won’t ride past 5 p.m. and since Vinayak Ji would be riding one Blaze because Ashish was not able to ride, it was a good decision because Vinayak ji is not an experience rider. But, first we had to collect our bikes, which had been parked at the hotel where Vinayak Ji was staying. As we reached there, we saw a lot of members already standing there waiting for us. Some of them, actually all of them, wanted xbhp T-shirts. As we opened the backup truck to give them the T-shirts, these guys crowded us; the the whole scene was looking like there was a 90% discount sale at an Armani showroom :D. Xbhp T-shirts were selling like hot cakes. Comet and Jupiter were parked at the hotel only, but we had to pick the 2 Blazes from Kinetic showroom. Knowing the distance that we had to travel, we were in a hurry, but the Trivandrum guys asked us to visit their college, which was on our way. This college was the only one Trivandrum which offers Bachelor’s degree in Automobile Engineering, so there were a lot of auto-enthusiastic guys and seeing a 1000rr roaring was just too good for them; they started screaming, clapping, and whistling; we were crowded by at least 40-50 students from the college who just wanted to touch and see the Fireblade. After that, we were accompanied by 10-12 members who were riding with us till Kanyakumari. The road from Kanyakumari to Trivandrum was very good, though single-lane most of the time, but we had no problem comfortably cruising at 80s that too in a group ride. We reached Kanyakumari by 1:40 p.m. Don’t know why, but as we were getting nearer to Kanyakumari, I was trying to ride faster and faster, just couldn’t resist the temptation to touch that milestone. You could actually see the blue-green sea water from some distance before the actual road ends. There was nothing special in that place to my eyes, but I knew it was special. I was very emotional at that point when I got off my bike. We took some photos there before going on a small ride on a road going along the beach, the road was wide enough to allow the Fireblade to touch that 200 kmph mark and Sunny took no time to do that. After clicking some photographs and taking some high-speed photographs, it was time to have lunch. Unfortunately, TVM guys didn’t go to the same restaurant where we went because they thought that it was expensive, but it was very cheap, but with damn good food, delicious. Since the GIR leg 2 started, it was the first time that I ate so tasty food that too typical north Indian Dal fry and chana masala. It was time to say goodbye to all those wonderful people who stood by us till we stayed in God’s own country, Kerala; bye friends, would meet again some day. We still had some 225 kms more to cover to reach Madurai, so it was time to have a little faster ride on the NH-7. This particular stretch of NH-7 from Kanyakumari to Madurai was very good, less traffic; it was single lane throughout, but the work was on to convert it into 4-lane highway. We had reached till Tirunelveli and it was getting dark and there was no point riding further on that single-lane road, so it was decided to call it a day there and to have night stay in Tirunelveli. Tirunelveil, is a 2000 years old city and is the sixth largest town of Tamilnadu. We got very cheap rooms in a hotel and that hotel had its own parking too, so it was the place of choice for Sunny as his Fireblade was safe here.

We were around 140 kms behind our originally planned destination, but I think it was good decision to not ride in the ride, especially with Vinayak Ji. Our destination for the next morning is Rameshwaram, the Kashi of South India, which is located some 370 kms from Tirunelveli.