Rameshwaram

Rameshwaram, on Pamban Island connected to the Tamil Nadu mainland by the historic 2.06 km Pamban Bridge, is one of the four Char Dhams of Hinduism (the four sacred cardinal pilgrimage sites that complete a Hindu's spiritual duty) and one of the 12 Jyotirlinga shrines.

• The island is sacred in the Ramayana: Lord Rama is believed to have built the Ram Setu (the stone bridge to Lanka, known as Adam's Bridge, visible as a geological formation under the shallow sea at Dhanushkodi) here, prayed to Shiva at this spot after the Lanka war to cleanse himself, and established the Shiva temple.
• The Ramanathaswamy Temple is one of India's most architecturally extraordinary pilgrimage sites: its outer and inner corridor system extends for 1,220 metres in total — the world's longest temple corridor — lined with 1,212 uniformly carved granite pillars creating a perspective of diminishing columns that recede to vanishing points in all directions.
• Inside the corridor circuit, 22 theertham (sacred water wells and tanks) are the ritual centrepiece of the Rameshwaram pilgrimage: devotees are bathed with water drawn from all 22 wells in sequence by temple priests before entering the main Ramalinga sanctum — each theertham is believed to have a different quality of healing and spiritual cleansing.
• The Agnitheertham ghaat at the seashore (200 m from the temple entrance) is the open-sea bathing ghat where pilgrims traditionally immerse in the Bay of Bengal before the theertham circuit.
• Dhanushkodi (18 km south-east, accessible by a shared jeep along the narrow sand spit) is the ghost town at the island's tip: a complete town destroyed in the cyclone of 22-23 December 1964, which killed at least 1,800 people across the region — including all 115 aboard the Pamban-Dhanushkodi passenger train — and the ruins have stood untouched since — a hauntingly beautiful landscape where the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean meet in two shades of blue simultaneously visible to either side.
• For vegetarian travellers, Rameshwaram is a fully pure-vegetarian pilgrimage town: the temple serves annadanam (free meals) and the town's restaurants specialise in Tamil temple cuisine — idli, pongal, vada with sambar, sundal (spiced boiled legumes — the essential prasad snack), and the unique Rameshwaram tamarind rice. November-March is comfortable.