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January 21-22, 1999

In India there are nearly 1 billion people, but like the Frenchman and then the Dutchman we have repeatedly connected with travelers we have met previously along the way. In Varanasi, the first Indian city we visited back in early December, we stayed at the Homey Lodge (which incidentally had possibly the best thali meal in India, barring perhaps the Karpagam in Madras). It was at the Homey that we met Rochelle Rosen from Miami. She was travelling around the world with her friend Susan Miller. They had enjoyed Europe and Africa, and had flown to Malaysia where they were to begin their Asia tour. During their first night in Asia, Susan decided she didn't like it and wanted to go away. Rochelle told her to sleep on it and that they would decide in the morning what to do together. The next morning Rochelle awoke to find all of Susan's bags gone and a note saying that Susan had gone to the airport, bought a ticket back to Paris and left Rochelle alone in Malaysia! Luckily, while in South Africa Rochelle had randomly bumped into an old college buddy. They arranged to travel through Nepal together where they both would be arriving in a few weeks, and so Rochelle was only alone for a short time.

When we met Rochelle and her college friend Roger in Varanasi, we discovered Roger was parting ways with Rochelle and heading to Australia around the first of the year. Rochelle, along with almost every other traveler in India, including us, was planning to go to Goa for New Year's. We decided we would meet up with her in Goa and continue through India together. Three young men travelling through India together is difficult. One single white female travelling through India is doubly so, and potentially quite dangerous. Due to our camel trek and some of the other unusual random acts of India, we found that we would not be in Goa by New Year's. In fact we didn't arrive until January 10th. To our surprise, Rochelle emailed us while we were in Mumbai and said she was going to be arriving in Goa on the tenth as well. Corresponding via email we decided we would meet at that time - no problem. When we arrived in Goa we discovered that gaining access to email was "not possible", and finally resigned ourselves to the fact that we would probably never see her again.

Wrong. In Alleppey, as we were walking out of Bijou's boat tour office, the morning of our trip having just haggled over the price of mineral water on the boat, we nearly tripped over Rochelle's HUGE backpack. Coincidentally, Rochelle and her temporary travelling companion Manuela had booked a boat tour for the same day and from the same company as us (out of a hundred possible choices). Manuela was going home to Germany in a couple of days, and so, we, being gentlemen, re-extended our invitation to Rochelle to come with us to Kanyakumari (Cape Cameron), the southern most tip of India. The three of us, Benti and now Rochelle composed a motley crew. We were five radically different souls, bonded by the common fact that we were foreigners in the most densely populated country in the world.

In early June 1998 when planning our trip, we set certain goals to help us mark our progress. In Nepal it was Mount Everest Base Camp, and in India it was the southern tip. Getting to Base Camp was physically and mentally challenging. Getting to Kanyakumari was just as hard, if not harder. Our packs were bigger and heavier, and although we weren't walking, transportation at times was next to impossible. The roads and hotels were more crowded and the weather, instead of freezing, was scorching. We had been having some difficulty with transportation and debated going to Kanyakumari. However, when we arrived in Trivandrum we were so very, very, very close to Kanyakumari, we decided we were too close to not finish. Upon investigation we found that we could even catch a train directly from Kanyakumari to Madras, this sealed the deal, and we caught the two-hour bus to the tip. Oddly, in an atypical Indian fashion we were allowed to book the Kanyakumari to Madras tickets in Trivandrum - an anomaly still unexplainable today.

The five of us arrived in Kanyakumari on January 22, 1999 - Josh's 25th birthday! Because of this and our huge sense of accomplishment we had a party on the roof of our hotel, which overlooked the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. We sang, danced, laughed and talked under the moonlight until 4:30 am. At 4:30 only the three Minnesota boys remained awake. Jeff stood up, looked over the edge down at the beach, and noticed about a hundred fisherman moving about, like a swarm of ants, in preparation to head out into the huge crashing waves in pursuit of the morning catch. We went down to the beach and watched the men set out in thirty to forty long, thin boats, fighting the tide in the same way they have been fishing for hundreds of years. It was 5:30 am and the sunrise in Kanyakumari, which is a "don't-miss" if in southern India, was only an hour away. We decided we would stay up, wait and watch. While waiting, to pass the time and absorb some of the juices sloshing around on our stomachs, we polished off several plates of iddly (rice patties) at a local dive. Even though it was cloudy the view was overwhelming. We watched for an hour, and then stumbled down to our beds to sleep a bit before we had to catch our train to Madras, which left at 2 pm that day.

In Kanyakumari, we visited another Gandhi memorial. It is a beautiful structure built to incorporate the Hindu, Muslim, and Christian types of architecture. Gandhi's ashes were kept here before being distributed to various holy sites around the world, and dispensed into the southern tip’s three seas. As we entered the memorial, we were quickly accosted by the security guard that instantly launched into an explanation of the memorial. We walked to the far end of the building to take a photo next to the Ghandi sculpture when our new friend showed up to play photographer. We had a hard time maintaining our composure in this sacred Indian monument as the guard abrasively maneuvered us into position and yelled, "SILENCE!" at the Indian tourists who were here paying their respects. He brought us upstairs to a ledge where we could watch the sunset, and even though the admission to the site was free, we wound up giving him 11 rupees for his entertainment and photo services. (Even though as you can see by the pictures he was no Ansel Adams!)