After a joyful night on the train, without any sleep we arrived in Ramaswaram, the old Southernmost point of India, at around 4.45am. Walking down the station we were greeted with the now familiar but no less disgusting chorus of people hawking up and choking on their own spit, the sound track of the dying, wonderful. I had a cup of station tea, possibly the best thing in the world after any train ride and we walked the couple of kilometres into the centre of town – we figured we had plenty of time before things opened up. Feeling in a ridiculously good mood we eventually left the auto rickshaw drivers behind and walked in relative peace and quiet, the sky was a magical deep blue and few people were up and about.
We walked round the big Ramanathaswamy temple asking in nearly every hotel for a room before settling on one with a sea view for a sweet 400Rs (about $9US) easily the best deal in town. Feeling greasy and sweaty after a night on the train and an hour or so trawling for hotels we had quick showers and headed out for some local breakfast at a small but busy hole in the wall café After flaky chapattis and spicy rice we found a bike rental place and got ourselves some sweet Indian bicycles to cycle out to the end of the spit which almost reaches across to Sri Lanka.
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| From Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India |
The road was flat and well paved, being back on a bike put me in an excellent mood and I rang my bell at everything we passed shouting hello and good morning and waving to the small children dressed for school. We cycled for about 10km until the road stopped and became soft sand through a tiny village whose sole income was from dried fish and extortionately priced Jeep rides to the end of the spit.
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| From Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India |
We decided to leave our bikes there and share a Jeep with a Mumbai guy and his Mum, we drove for about 15-20 minutes and arrived at some ruined buildings and an old church made from coral blocks, it was pretty cool but Djalma and I wanted to see the end and having no idea how far it was we began walking along the beach to what we thought was the tip.
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| From Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India |
The young obnoxious driver chased after us when we were a good way away from where we started out and motioned for us to come back because the waiting time was up, we went back only after he promised to take us out to the tip where we originally agreed to go.
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| From Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India |
After a big hoo-haa and a long wait we left for the tip which was short drive away and utterly beautiful. There were lots of clouds which occasionally let through brilliant burst of sunlight making the sand whiter and the sea bluer, it wasn't very photogenic but it was gorgeous. After some mincing about in the sea and a quick video pointing out the way to Sri Lanka we loaded ourselves back into the Jeep and heading back to “civilisation”.
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| From Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India |
Back at the little village we took ourselves off to speak to the policeman about the drivers behaviour – he had asked for money while we were on the beach and threatened to go back and take away our rented bicycles amongst other things so none of us were very happy. It turned out that the very uninterested policeman was only operating a checkpoint and that there wasn't any type of complaints procedure, because the guy was a real douche bag we persevered between several different languages (they only spoke Tamil, a little English but no Hindi and our Mumbai guy spoke English, Hindu and some other language from a different region) no-one making himself very clear. After lots of 'no problem, no problem' I got very angry (my turn after Djalma had to restrain himself from punching the arrogant little turd) and told him that we would not be paying him any money, instead we would go down to the police station, file a complaint and pay them the money. We left soon after that and cycled to a quiet spot by the sea to sit down in the shade while my temper cooled down and I had a good old rant. We quickly decided not to give the money to the police because he didn't deserve it (the others paid their money) and later decided to give his money to an Indian charity and send an email to the tourist police.
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| From Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India |
The cycle ride back was longer, hotter and pelvic jarringly painful, thankfully neither our knees nor legs gave up on us and we reached the bike place and handed them back gratefully walking on our own two legs again. Utterly shattered we took the lift back up to our room and washed the paste of grit, sweat, sand and sun-cream off our sticky bodies before rolling on aching legs to a small snack shop for sustenance.
Unsurprisingly bed time was extremely early as was our check out time form the hotel, by 7am we were packed and gone on our way to the train station to try and get up to the Cauvery Delta.
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