The Third Corridor (Longest Pillared Corridor), Ramanathaswamy Temple

Few sights in India reward an unhurried walk quite like the third prakaram of the Ramanathaswamy Temple, the great outermost corridor that rings the inner enclosures on Rameswaram island.

• Rank upon rank of granite piers march away in perfect file until they converge on a single distant point — an optical effect so widely reproduced that it has become a shorthand image for South Indian temple architecture, even though cameras are not permitted inside the complex itself.
• By popular reckoning it is the longest pillared corridor in India: the third (outermost) prakaram is usually counted at about 1,212 granite pillars, and the temple's corridors together run to roughly 3,850 feet — some 1.2 km — of colonnade.
• The complex as a whole is often credited with several thousand pillars once the inner corridors and mandapams are added, though published counts differ.
• The piers stand tall and the passage is airy, carrying a deep ornamented cornice, so daylight enters from the flanks in long shifting bars and the polished floor is striped with shadow through the day.
• Built in the late-Nayak-period idiom, the third prakaram is credited above all to the Sethupathi rulers of Ramanathapuram, its monumental final form conventionally associated with Muthuramalinga Sethupathi in the eighteenth century; earlier phases of the complex are considerably older and precise dates are debated.
• Each pillar is worked from a single block of granite, many carrying yali (leonine) brackets, lotus medallions, floral bands and small figural panels, and no two runs are quite identical — walk slowly and what first reads as pure repetition resolves into steady variation.
• The stone is not native to this low sand-and-coral island, which only deepens the wonder of the traditional accounts describing how it was ferried by boat from the mainland across the shallow straits and dressed by hand.
• Enter through any of the four gopuram gateways and simply follow the outer passage all the way round, keeping the inner enclosures on your right.
• Footwear is left at the stands outside, so come early or in the late afternoon when the open stretches of stone are cool underfoot; the corridor is broad and level, which makes it one of the easier long walks in the complex for elderly visitors, though the crowd thickens sharply on festival days.
• Photography, cameras and mobile phones are restricted inside, and a modest dress code applies.
• For food, plan on eating pure-vegetarian in the pilgrim lanes around the temple.
• Rameswaram is a working fishing island, so this is not a guarantee that everything nearby is meat-free: the belt immediately around the gopurams is dominated by pure-veg South Indian 'meals' hotels and small tiffin rooms, but look for an explicitly pure-veg board and confirm with the counter before you order.
• Expect crisp dosa, steamed idli, filter coffee and unlimited banana-leaf sappadu from mid-morning.
• Avoid the seafront and jetty-side eateries, which serve the fishing trade.