Wait, What?
Is it a boat ride? Nope. On a cruise ship? Nope. Did I just swim to the middle of a sea? Never in my wildest dreams.
This write up is about a (not so) recent trip to Dhanushkodi with my friends. Sorry for the (kinda) misleading title, though.
Dhanushkodi has been on my bucket list for a very long time. Ever since I first learned to drive 3 years back (I'm 21) driving on the road to Dhanushkodi with the sea on both sides of the road was my dream. Having planned for it multiple times with every attempt being a cancelled plan (like all Goa plans), my excitement was through the roof when the plan for this trip was made.
We decided to go on October 2. Because that was when the college could not conduct classes. And we assumed that there would be no weekend rush as Oct 2 was on Tuesday. I study at SASTRA Deemed University in Thanjavur. The car was in our home in Vellakoil (160km from college). So, the following plan was made. We were 5 of us. Classes would end on Oct 1 at 4.15pm for me and one of my friends and at 5.15pm for the rest. We both would go to my home on a bus, ask mom to prepare some home cooked food for the road (we were hostelers desperate for home food
), get the car, meet others at Karur and then off we go! We could’ve waited an hour, but none of us wanted to miss the sunrise at Dhanushkodi. So every hour counted!
We reached my home at around 10 pm. My mom had packed the food already and we were ready to go after having a coffee. We left my home around 11:15. The timing was perfect. They were 40 mins away from Karur and Karur is 42km from my home. After checking the basics (like fluid levels, tyre pressure, filled up the tank and the mandatory stop at our ancestral temple, we were on our way.
This guy, Dileep, has never been on a road trip before. So he was more excited than me. On our way to Karur on NH-67 (2-laned), I had my first near death experience. What a way to start a dream journey and a first road trip! There were two bikers on the road, one behind the other. I was doing 90kmph. Suddenly, one of them decided to overtake the other and came midway into my lane without checking his mirror. This would have been a rather normal situation to deal with except that there was a truck on the opposite lane and I was too close to the bike. I slammed on the brake and the wheels immediately locked up and the car was now sideways, pointing to the right, facing the truck. I steered to the left, then right. I lost count of how many counter steers I had to do to keep the car straight. Dileep was screaming his lungs out. But I was never scared. Not even for a split second. Not until I stopped the car by the side of the road. Then it hit me. I realized what we had just been through. My heart was racing like never before. I took some time to calm myself down and then we resumed the journey.
We regrouped in Karur at about 12.30 and started to Dindigul. Karur to Dhanushkodi will take about 5h45min according to Google Maps and the sunrise was at 6:07 on that day. Just after the tollgates near Dindigul, we stopped for a late night dinner and then started again around 2 am. We were using Google Maps for navigation and it lead us right through the narrowest streets of Madurai. It took us about 45 minutes to cross Madurai. The road from Madurai to Ramanathapuram had construction work going on. But I have to say, it has to be the worst marked construction work ever. The four-lane road suddenly changes into or is diverted to a two-lane road quite often and with very minimal (in one case, without any) marking. It is best to maintain speeds of 80 kmph during the day and less than that if you’re travelling after nightfall.
Just as we were about to reach Ramanathapuram, it started raining heavily. The car aquaplaned when I was doing 80 kmph. Here's a short video of it :
So I slowed down to 50 kmph for a while and the car was still aquaplaning quite a bit. It was such a badly designed road that there were puddles all over in the fast lane.
It was now that it seemed to us that we wouldn’t make it for the sunrise. After we crossed Ramanathapuram, little did we know that we’d murder hundreds of flies (those flies that appear only after rains)? The windshield was covered with those flies. And at a point, I had to stop the car to wash the windshield before continuing.
The colour of the sky when we stopped to wash the windshield:
The sun was peeking already and we were able to see orange hues in the sky. It was beautiful, to say the least. We crossed Pamban, still having the slightest hope that we would somehow make it. Here’s a picture we took on the Pamban bridge from inside the car. You can see the dead flies on the windshield. Those were new ones to die after I washed the windshield earlier.
We were finally on my dream stretch! The beautiful, arrow straight road leading to the very edge of the sea. This has to be one of the most gorgeous roads to drive in Tamil Nadu. I couldn’t help but floor the car here. Open road. No traffic. Smooth tarmac. The temptation to go pedal to the metal is just irresistible. With 5 people on board and luggage, the small and humble Ritzy was able to hit decently high speeds. That was pretty impressive. And that too for a car that’s 8.5 years old! Here’s a video of the drive to Ram Sethu point.
I will let pictures do the talking for now.
Dhanushkodi is Bae!
We were also fortunate enough to see a rainbow!
We missed the sunrise by 12 minutes. But that didn’t let our spirits die. The scenery around us was just too surreal. After goofing around in the beach for a while, we were extremely hungry and also wanted to freshen up. So went back in search of a hotel, skipping the visit to the ruined buildings. This time though, I was absorbing the beauty around me and I didn’t go above 50kmph. It is a road that everyone must drive on at least once. We booked a room for 6 hours in a no-name hotel that we just stopped by. Mom’s dinner was still left over for us all to have breakfast! We crashed for a while after breakfast and then woke up at 12.30 pm. Checked out and went in search of lunch. We had lunch in a restaurant called Aathira Veg Restaurant. If I had to use one word to describe the food there, it would be terrible. Just choose any other place. We went to the temple, to the House of Kalam, and then to Dr Kalam’s Memorial. Photography is banned in all of the three places. We reached Pamban by 6 pm. We decided to wait for the 6.45 pm train from Rameshwaram. I parked the car by the side of the road just before the bridge and then asked everyone to walk to the bridge so as to not cause hindrance to other vehicles. Surprisingly, all of them agreed! We watched the train pass and then left by around 7 pm.
By the time we reached Madurai, it was 10 pm. We stopped by a Dindigul Thalapakkatti Restaurant and had a sumptuous dinner. A perfect ending to a perfect day. We reached my home at 1:30 in the morning. We were supposed to wake up by 4 am to get on a bus so that we would be able to attend classes that start at 8.45am. But we all woke up at 8! Classic. We had breakfast and then started to Thanjavur at 10.15am. I was asleep for most of the bus journey. By the time we reached college, it was 2.45pm. Guess what, I crashed in my bed again!
The Squad, with yours truly in the centre and the screamer to your left.
Thank you BHPians for reading this. This is my first post on the forum. So please correct me if there are any mistakes. The reason why I did not mention this at the beginning like how most people starting out do is because I wanted an unbiased opinion from you guys so that I can improve my writing skills for future posts.
Till then, Happy New Year and Happy Revving!
And BTW, the last pic is the reason behind the title!