Tamil Nadu, India: Rameswaram to Madurai

This is the next post about my trip to India. If you haven't read the previous post about this trip, click here.

In the morning, we waited for plans to be confirmed and waited for our cars to pick us up. As soon as we were ready, we headed to Ramarpatham temple, which has significance for Hindus (which I unfortunately can't properly recall) and is also the highest point on the island.

One of my favorite sights - a goat nibbling on the decorative flowers.

The view from the temple was really nice - you could see the whole island.

We went back into town and waited for the jeeps to meet us. While we were waiting, I found this picturesque alleyway.

Then we saw our ride for the first time.

It was pretty cool. It was pretty much a rolling junk yard, though, and I expected nothing less. The battery was completely exposed and sat right between the drivers seat and passenger seat. Also, of course there were no 

Then we set out to drive down the peninsula.

Here is a picture that partially illustrates how close I was to the road - no doors!

We got past the last point on the peninsula where there were legal residents (and electricity!), which is where we went off road, since the road ended. 

The furthest away from the mainland we drove was where the old town was, but it was destroyed by a tsunami in 1964. You can still see all the ruins of the apartments, train station, church, etc.

There was also a wild turkey wandering around. I can't imagine it was local, but it was providing entertainment to everyone around (as you can tell by the person taking a selfie in the background of this picture). 

We walked down past the old church and headed to the beach.

I've never really been to a beach like this. It looks just like how I imagine the Maldives looks. We stayed for a while and walked down the beach towards the fishermen, who had their boats anchored just off shore.

Then we headed back and passed this souvenir shop, which I thought was really quite picturesque. 

Then we had to drive back to the city. This morning driving around was my favorite single activity we did during the whole trip. I could definitely get into off-roading, especially when it ends in a beach that looks like the Maldives.

After galavanting around off road in the Jeeps, we had to get driving to Madurai. We spent most of the afternoon driving, which I luckily slept through. 

the view from the bridge that goes from Rameswaram back to the mainland

We arrived in the evening and did a bit of shopping and had a nice dinner. We were pretty exhausted, so we were looking forward to the next day, where we would be able to rest a bit.

Also, I made a little video of clips I took from the off-roading on Rameswaram: