Day 10 – Renault India Diamond Trail – A day in Kanyakumari
Day 10: India Diamond Trail with the Renault Kwid
On the tenth day of the India Diamond Trail, we reached our second big milestone, Kanyakumari, a day ahead of schedule itself. With little scope to shoot the Renault Kwid at night, we were eager to take a glimpse of the sunrise the following morning. We could see the ocean from our hotel room and our crew went absolutely bonkers over it. So, we left at 5:30am and drove the Renault Kwid to the sunrise point. The location offered great views of the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the Thiruvalluvar Statue.
The Memorial is quite an architectural marvel that is built on a rock which is situated 400m off the shore. Construction completed in 1970 and the memorial is only accessible by a boat. It’s believed that Swami Vivekananda attained enlightenment at the rock on which it is built. The statue of Saint Thiruvalluvar too is a beautiful monument and is dedicated to the esteemed poet from the ancient times. The owner of the hotel where we were staying for the night gave us some good information regarding the poet. He mentioned that Thiruvalluvar’s two lined poems gave answers to all of life’s different problems and that’s the reason his work is so famous in the world of literature. Poets from that era (300 BC – 5th century AD) wrote long texts but Thiruvalluvar’s short poems turned out to be more impactful. We had more interesting conversations regarding automobiles with the hotel’s owner who seemed to have great appreciation for French cars, especially Renault. When we told him about the India Diamond Trail, he was very impressed by the enormity of our adventure.
Missed out on day 9 of the India Diamond Trail? Read about it here
The leg three of our drive has now started and being the longest leg of our drive, it’ll be a while until we reach Kibithoo in Arunachal Pradesh driving the Renault Kwid. We will first drive through the eastern coastal roads following which we will pass by Kolkata, Siliguri and Guwahati. Stay tuned.
