Kaveri, Kanmaigal, Karmegam, Kodiyakkarai

This blog narrates my 1400km ride, and is photo heavy (meaning it is mostly photos)

Time has been on my mind for some time. Particularly the more self-filled time. The time you spend by yourself, the time you spend thinking about yourself, the time you spend on doing things, the time you spend not doing things. Neram is what it is called in Tamil, and neram is fickle. You have to decide what to do in advance, you have to stick by it, you have to stitch it with the importance needed in your mind. Otherwise, neram is no longer yours, it belongs to other people, other happenings, feelings that piggy back onto this neram that never will be yours.

I chose to fill my year end neram with Karmegam and the road (we have a long break at the end of the year), but I was not sure where I would ride to. It was unstitched, there were no companions decided, but I kept talking about it. I told my friends at Aruvu, I told a few other friends, I kept talking without having planned it. I invited many people, I kept thinking about it, but even the neram spent thinking about it was scattered. It was never laced with any sort of gravitas, just something that will happen, whatever may come.

It felt necessary to me that I drive inside TamilNadu, for I’ve never worked there. I’ve never noticed, and observed intentionally, not to the extent I do now. It appears to me that this sort of observation, and noticing, and then writing about it is the way I remember well. Otherwise most things I see are lost to the stitchless neram.

And so I knew that I will drive within TN, but where? The coast was simple to me: I must see different parts of the coast - I want to see what lives where there is no city, no ‘beach’, but the landscape inbetween the unfarmed land and the vegetated coast.

But how do I reach the coast from bangalore? This became the question that plagued right uptill the morning I left. I could not drive all the way to Kanyakumari because my bank account was not so accomodative (it will not be for a few more years I think). Even a mid-way trip was difficult. I decided that I will do a Salem - Pudukottai - Ramnad - Nagapattinam - Chennai route.

Bengaluru - Salem - Mallasamudram

The evening after the hot, dry and polluted afternoon is one the most pleasant things to experience. Hosur road and bangalore city was not as annoying as I expected, but it was still hot. I left in the afternoon, after a lazy morning preparing the house to be without me: cleaning out the fridge and stuffing myself with food.

Thoppur will not seem like a reserve forest at all. If not for the extensive speed checks and barriers, and a large amount of reflectors on the road. Monkeys are nearby. When I saw the tallest pillars I have seen at the end of it, I was amused: what large infrastructure project is happening and was allowed here? The 4 lane roads inside the forest is large enough. There is an elevated highway coming to reduce accidents, human accidents, not human - animal ones (atleast that is what the reporting focusses on.)

I eat dinner with an uncle at Manimozhi mess. My uncle eats for company, and the hotel owner asks: who eats for company?

Mallasamudram - Pudukottai

Kollipannaigal and wells

In Mallasamudram town, your ears will be covered with the rhythm of the electric looms running inside houses. They have reduced as the parents get old and the children work elsewhere. Once you exit the town, one of the most prominent sounds you will hear inside the villages is the occasional (but by no means not common) poultry farm. It is an incredibly sad sight, from birth to death you will remain in a cage, you will share skin, shit and fate with your neighbour. You will be fat, your shit will pile up below you. You will be transported to cities and villages far away, all people will remember of you is your smell and taste. Smell and sight are apparently foregettable, but not the taste. See the egrets below? They are feeding

I only recently (in the past months) ventured out of the town onto the villages bordering. There are many wells, rectangular, large and at a very shallow depth seemingly. Water level is at (from visual observation) 3-4 mts from ground level.

Kallanai and algae

My mother suggests that I visit the 1800 year old dam, Kallanai, build by Karikala Chozhan in 150CE in Tiruchi while going to Pudukottai. I follow the Kaveri, catch Mukkombu, the dam upstream and then Kallanai, the dam downstream. Kollidam, Kaveri, Vennar and a canal are the distributaries that Kallanai and Mukkombu split the Kaveri into.

Algae on the floor of the Kollidam spillway.

Kaveri has less water flowing through it. See the vegetation!

The faint blue colour of the Kallanai render it very non-special looking.

Karaikudi, Ramanathapuram, Dhanushkodi

In Karaikudi, I saw a lot of ’Oorani’s, a village-temple tank. Many were covered in Lotuses. They appear to be invasive.

Kanmaigal in Ramnanathapuram

I wanted to pass through Ramanathapuram district because I saw these very curiously shaped water bodies. All crescent shaped heading away from the slope. They are facinating! Are they all manmade? They are connected manytimes and are not mapped at all (I will be mapping these on OSM :)) They are called Kanmais, I learn from a farmer on the way.

See the spill way on the far end of this photo, of the same kanmai.

Notice the crescent moon like shapes everywhere? They are all Kanmais. ESRI imagery, modified to highlight the Kanmais

The same region for reference. These occur at huge scales!

Karuvelam, Prosopis Juliflora was apparently aerially seeded in Ramnathapuram during the 60s because they provided drought resistant fire wood. Now they are everywhere. They pervade all the kanmais in the region in various scales. Here, there is one stem looking up from the water.

Panchayats take care of them, but find it difficult to remove the Karuvelam. They are everywhere, inbetween farms, sometimes creeping into cultivable land, inside Kanmais, on the Kanmai bunds, on the sides of roads… everywhere.

Karuvelam and a pump room right next to the water

Why would you not go to Ramnad?

I am talking to a farmer who also owns a tea shop, about Kanmais (Kammais, as he pronounced them). He asks where I’m from and where I’m driving to. I say I only came to Ramanathapuram to see the Kanmais. Not Rameswaram, or Dhanushkodi. He gasps! Why would you come all this way, only 2 hours away from Rameswaram and not see it. You should go see it! And so I decide to drive to Dhanushkodi.

At Dhanushkodi, traffic peaks. At the literal end of mainland india, there is a traffic jam. Vehicles from many states, diverse trash

Right next to the coast, what are these calves eating/ This is probably trash from the Pamban bridge, where I am taking the photo from.

Dr. Abdul Kalam’s memorial

It is a sad political affair that is the memorial. Inside, there is a statue of him playing the Sitar, with a ‘Bhagavad Gita’ book sculpted along with him. It has been there since 2017