From Bangalore to Dhanushkodi Part 1

Last Friday, Aviral and I decided to visit Rameshwaram (the reasons being the visit of Aviral's Grand Father and maternal uncle and mine duty towars my father) so we started on Friday night by taking a KSRTC bus from the majestic stand to Madurai at around 10 PM. Madurai is around 400 km from Bangalore. The journey was bit arduous but we had Bankers to poor and Made in USA in our hands and we tried our best to finish them but the clouds of sleep were more powerful. We reached Madurai at around 8 in the morning.
We immediately decided to pay our respect to Goddess Meenakshi. The Meenakshi Temple is the finest example of Dravidian Architecture and i have not seen such a majestic temple before. I have become a huge admirer of this temple since Dec 2003 (My first visit to south India). The temple auhority stopped us from entering the temple as Aviral was in shorts and they dont allow people in shorts to enter Temple. We were shell shocked as well as angry so we decided to move forward to our main aim i.e. the Rameshwaram temple.
We took a state transport bus from Madurai to Rameshwaram at around 10 in the morning (Rameshwaram is 170 km from Madurai). The island of Rameshwaram is connected to the main land India by Pamban bridge. The bus took 5 hours to reach Rameshwaram. At 3 PM in the afternoon after doing necessary things we decided to pay our visit to the famous Jyortilingas of Rameshwaram. This temple is situated on the bank of Bay of Bengal and its quite a site to behold. After having Darshanas we searched for some thing to eat but all the restaurants were closed as they dont serve food between 2 PM to 7 PM. So we continued our journey to the eastern most sentinel of this island i.e. Dhanushkodhi village (about 18 kms from Rameshwaram). This village is the home of Dr. Kalam Shahab. Dhanushkodhi place is absolutely awesome as it is surrouned on the three sides by sea and the beach is quite long and narrow You can see the Ram Setu, you can see the island of Srilanka (only 18 kms from Dhanushkodhi). There is also a forward post of Indian Navy there but that looked very very ordinary to us as for us the real sentry of this island were the fishermen. It was getting very dark so we decided to return to Rameshwaram.
I payed my homage to one of the the last physical remains of my father by dispersing his ashes in the Bay of Bengal just few yards from the Rameshwaram temple. May his soul find peace in heaven.

The next day is about my conversion.