Fortunate are those who visit the holy, sacred and sanctified land of Rameshwaram at least once in their entire life span… I along with my family had been privileged to visit Rameshwaram, popularly known as one out of four “Dham” via Chennai. The railway journey over the sea for a spell of 12-15 minutes is awe-inspiring.
I always do a massive home-work before taking my family out of the town; you may call it my appetite or efficiency. Accordingly, Railway Tickets, booking of Hotels and Sight Seeing Tours were done from Delhi itself. This process resulted in fewer transactions of cash and no hassle of language problem besides saved precious time.
The best season to visit Chennai is winter especially November to February. As scheduled, journey was started in December via Train No. 2434 Rajdhani Express from New Delhi to Chennai Central. The taxi took hardly 5 minutes to leave us at TTDC Hotel. Since sight seeing tours were already booked, we had been to Mahabalipuram, Kanchipuram, Golden Beach, City tour, Snake Park etc. Back-Water Boating gave us a novel experience. The beauty of Sun set at world’s second longest Marina Beach and visit to Crocodile Bank are hard to define in words. TTDC provided Breakfast, Lunch Tea etc. each day with the above tours.
I with the strength of my words and eternal memories of those divine moments, now wish you all to take to that pious and virtuous land where Lord Rama erected “Shivlingam” before attacking Ravana to get back Sita.
We enjoyed a ride in Chennai’s Local Train from Egmore Station up to Tambram Station as Setu Express (6713) starts at 13:00 hrs from Tambram to reach Rameshwaram next morning. The train having pantry facility with 1st Class Coupe was nice enough. The attendant told us that track over sea would approach in the morning.
And the eagerly awaiting moments made us spell bound with a pinch of fear when at about 6.30 a.m. suddenly, we saw the magic. It was hard to believe the gradual disappearance of land but truly train was running on the track over the mammoth sea. Train’s speed was put to slower side perhaps for safety purposes and we on our own restricted our movements as if we were on a boat. Correspondingly gradual Sun-rise made our moments more memorable as we witnessed as if it is coming out of the womb of sea. The scene was mesmeric, enticing and fascinating…
A Tanga ride of 10 minutes from Rameshwaram Station to Ramanathaswamy Temple was joyful. A ‘Panda’ was engaged who advised us to bath in the sea before main “Darshans”. We reached inside the temple with wet clothes on, where we had 22 times bathing from the pious water pulled from the 22 adjoining wells. Water of each well had a different but sweet taste although located quite near to salty water of the sea…, it is said mother Sita too had bath with the water of these wells. By 11 am we became free from the divine Darshan.
An auto, the best mode available there had been hired to have local tour which requires 3 hours so as to catch the scheduled train for Chennai at 3.10 pm. Temples are worth visiting and floating stones are still available. One can buy items made of shell etc. from the market. Despite destruction by massive flood, visit to Dhanushkoti gives a wonderful view of sea and Sri Lanka. This is the place where Vibhishana met Lord Rama.
We touched the land which came into contact with the feet of Lord Rama…
razHanda