PM Modi begins meditation at Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari

After wrapping up two months of intense election campaigning across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began a 45-hour meditation at the famous Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari on May 30 evening. (PTI photo)

After arriving by helicopter from near Thiruvananthapuram, PM Modi offered prayers at the Bhagavathi Amman temple and then took a ferry to the rock monument to begin his meditation, which is expected to continue till June 1. (PTI photo)

Dressed in a dhoti and white shawl, PM Modi offered prayers at the temple. Priests performed a special ‘arti’ and the PM received the shawl and the temple’s ‘prasad’, which included a framed photograph of the temple’s guardian deity. (PTI photo)

The Prime Minister then reached the rock memorial by a ferry operated by the state government’s shipping company and began his meditation in the ‘meditation mandapam’. Before beginning his meditation, PM Modi stood for some time on the steps leading to the mandapam, which offers breathtaking views of the sea that surrounds the memorial on all sides. (PTI Photo)

The Prime Minister offered flowers at the portraits of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his mother Sri Sarada Devi, and also at Swami Vivekananda, whose life-size statue sits on a high pedestal adorning the mandapam. PM Modi then began his sadhana (spiritual practice) at the mandapam. (PTI photo)

The prime minister, who had chosen the Kedarnath caves as a place of reflection and meditation after completing his campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, this time chose a site of spiritual significance on the southernmost tip of mainland India. (PTI photo)

PM Modi meditated on the night of May 30 to the night of June 1 at the Dhyan Mandapam, the place where Vivekananda, the spiritual icon revered by the PM, is believed to have had a divine vision of ‘Bharat Mata’. (PTI Photo)