Saturday, March 22, 2008

The journey to Rameshwaram was something out of this world

On an invitation from my lecturer i decided to join him on this spiritual journey.I booked my tickets well in advance and was lucky to get the tickets since it was not a busy weekend.The journey started on a sad note when the KSRTC Volvo bus arrived an hour late,to be standing in the rain was a bit of a dampner indeed

I reached Madurai at around 8:15 am and headed to the Royal Court Hotel ,my lecturer joined me there ,he flew down to Madurai.We quickly took a bath,after a savouring some hot idlis at Murugan Idli shop we headed straight to Rameshwaram.

The weather was one of the best i have ever witnessed,it had rained all night and a cool breeze was the icing on the cake.We went via Paramakudi which is the native of the famous south indian actor Kamal Hassan.The driver breezed past the curvy roads in excess of 100 ms/hour which is why we reached quite fast.As we enter Rameshwaram we find the famous Pamban bridge and the view from here will blow one of its feet

We had lunch and then headed straight to the sea for a bath.One can see the main gopura from the sea.Inside the temple we again took bath in the 21 kundas which is suppose to purify one's sins.The remarkable thing about the whole thing was that each of the water where we took bath,we encountered a different feel,temperature,which is quite surprising.

Even more startling is the fact that all these water sources are natural and except for two kundas all the others are sweet water.

We then prayed to god and spent some time at the temple.We then headed to the Kodanda Rama temple.The unique thing about this place is that it is surrounded by water on all the 3 sides and it is about 3 kms into the sea.The view of this place is absolutely mind blowing.


We then visited the Rama pada temple where Rama is supposed to have kept his first foot in India .It was 5:45 pm by now,we decided to head back to Madurai.Our brilliant driver Mr Kalai literally flew back to Madurai in 2 hours and 10 mins flat.I arrived in time for my bus back to Bangalore :)

All in all this was a very refreshing and divine experience for me to visit a holy place and I thank GOD for making this trip of mine a success.

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