Indira Gandhi Bridge to Pamban Island, Tamil Nadu. January 2015
Railway bridge to Pamban Island viewed from the Indira Gandhi Bridge, Tamil Nadu. January 2015
The unexpected
On my adventure to the Ramanathaswamy Temple with brothers MP, most of the journey was on two lane roads from Madurai to Mandapam. We played the usual game of chicken overtaking buses and trucks the whole way. It was a painfully slow journey and kudos to MP senior for having the grit to drive for all those hours. I just looked out the window to see Tamil Nadu become increasingly flat in a succession of non-descript villages along the way. Finally, we reached Mandapam and got ready to cross the Indira Gandhi Bridge. As it stands tall over the Palk Strait, many people stop their vehicles to get out and take photos (so did we).
The water was not crystal clear, but it was tropical blue. I don't know why it surprised me, but it added an air of exoticism to the journey. Pamban Island, which holds one of the great pilgrimage temples of Hinduism, was on the other side of the bridge. The blue water signaled leaving the green desert of rice paddies in Tamil Nadu and entering into another realm. We looked down below us at the railway bridge which until 1988 was the ONLY bridge to the island. It had been built in 1914 and remained the longest railway bridge over water in India for nearly 100 years. It served both pilgrims to the Ramanathaswamy Temple and also to Dhanushkodi where there used to be a ferry service to Sri Lanka [see: Dhanushkodi Beach]. The train crossing looked almost level with the water from the height of the bridge and I wondered how exciting it would have been to reach that point after a long train journey and look out on the blue sea in both directions.
We pressed onward. I felt the excitement was an omen of good things to come. It was!
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