Dhanushkodi Beach, Pamban Island January 2015
Wiped from the face of the earth....
Dhanushkodi Beach was actually just the whipped cream on the experience of visiting the great Ramanathaswamy Temple in Rameshwaram. I hadn't even heard of Dhanushkodi before the trip, but brothers MP and MP wanted to see it and after crossing the bridge over to Pamban, I knew the water would at least be blue. The road quickly degenerated and we went as far as we could in MP's 4WD SUV. We parked and sat on the beach. How could this be India? White sand, no people, nearly pristine, blue water -- the place was begging to be discovered. We hung out for awhile, but with no services and no way to make it to the very tip of the island to see "Adam's Bridge" (the set of reefs and shoals that extend over to Sri Lanka), we left and started the long journey back to Madurai.
Why was everyone going to Goa or Kerala to the beach and not here? MP and MP said there used to be a town there, but couldn't explain much more to me. I looked it up later online.
December 22, 1964 started a week from hell for the people of northern Sri Lanka and Pamban Island, India. The largest cyclone ever to hit Sri Lanka and one of the largest ever to hit India made landfall. Sri Lanka fared worse than India and bore the full brunt of the cyclone. When the storm hit Pamban Island, it had already weakened a bit. Nevertheless it packed a punch and Dhanushkodi, formerly a town with a train station and a ferry jetty that connected India to Sri Lanka, was literally erased. I cannot imagine the magnitude of a storm that was so power it destroyed a town, a rail and ferry connection, and basically a whole border crossing. Before the storm, one could hop a train to Dhanushkodi from Madurai, India, get on a boat, get off in Mannar Island, Sri Lanka and continue on by rail to Jaffna or Colombo. It was a regular service and was heavily used. The destruction was so total, it was not even considered to rebuild it. Apparently the ocean swept over Pamban and all the wells were polluted with sea water as well. The entire ecology of the island changed.
These days, it is a scrubby peninsula pointing toward Sri Lanka like a sandy finger. There only remain fishermen and their very colorful boats. No tourists venture to Dhanushkodi because no locals want to live there to provide any services. In rapidly developing India, I am not sure how long such a lovely beach will remain like this. For me it was an eye opening moment to realize I visited a place that used to be a town and now is literally nothing. It's not like it can't happen again and it's not like the only place this might happen is India. For anyone living on all those slender barrier islands along the East Coast of the USA, Dhanushkodi should be a kind of reminder of what might happen (or will happen?).
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