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Vivek talked about Rameshwaram and Dhanushkodi in his last post and I found that he missed visiting inside Dhanushkodi village. So, my story will start from Dhanushkodi and to your surprise, it will end at Dhanushkodi. We reached Rameshwaram from Madurai about 3:00 PM, we planned to visit Rameshwaram temple in the morning, so we asked our taxi driver Kanan if there is any beach nearby or not, he noded his head and said “Yeeessss” (I liked the way he used to say Yeeessss”), it is 13 KMS from here and called as Dhanushkodi. Without saying anything else, he started towards Dhanushkodi, as Vivek mentioned, it was a 2 lane road, roaring ocean on both side. Left side of the ocean is called “Male” and right side of the ocean is called “Female”, reason, left side is quiet and calm and right side is roaring all the time, my wife and my mother didn’t liked the reason, and neither my daughter  – As told by Kannan, no offence please. Well, we reached the beach in an about 45 minutes, on the way, we also visited a temple where Lord Rama performed the “Raj Tilak” of Vibhishan. Kanan told us that this is the beach, it was very deserted, we found a Indian Navy post there a tea stall and a snack shop. Indian Ocean was beautiful, roaring and with high waves. We dared to go deep inside it and also asked kids stay off.
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Madurai, Thursday, July 2

I and my in-laws both wanted to visit Rameshwaram (one of the 4 dhams mentioned in Hindu mythology) from last so many years and this summer we decided to plan and excecute it as well.

You need a very good luck to get the reservation in Tuticorin express and we were lucky enough to got it for 1^st july from Bangalore to Madurai and 4^th from Madurai to Bangalore.

I have taken off from office accordingly and planned the tour. I, my wife Smita, son Kavvy, Bro-in-law, his wife, and my father-in-law and mother-in-law left the Bangalore home in evening as it is not easy to reach Bangalore railway station due to Bangalore traffic problem. Anyway we reached station on time and after having dinner got into our train.
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It was beginning of November and bright sunshine forced it’s way in our rooms. In Chennai, it does not matter if winter is officially around the corner, the sun and it’s army rule day long. Fuelled with the fantastic breakfast we set out to explore the history, still alive and breathtaking.

Mahabalipuram or sometimes called as Mammalpuram is a township 40 kms south of Chennai metropolis. The town is ancient, believed to be a thriving sea port during the reign of Pallav kings in the 6’th and 7’th century. Pallav dynasty ruled most of the Coromandel coast and Tamilnadu with their seat of power at Kanchi. Kanchipuram is also about a 75 km distance from Chennai and is famous for the temples which are again a feast to the eyes. The Pallav kings, SimhaVishnu, Mahendravarman, Narasimhavarman, powerful and prominent also backed the art and architecture and thus flourished the exquisite temple art we were about to see.

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For almost two months we were contemplating on visiting Maha Lakshmi Golden Temple at Sripuram near Vellore and finally the plans seemed to materialize during last week of May 2009. My brother-in-law Siva wanted to take his new Swift Dezire to Golden Temple and we decided to go there on a two day trip. We decided on taking two cars – My Santro and Siva’s Dezire as Siva’s friend Ravindran also joined in with his family.

Family 1 : PraveenKumar(Myself), Vathsalya Lakshmi (My Wife), Dad & Mom
Family 2 : Siva Subba Rao, Dr.Suman, Chaitanya & Narasimha Bai
Family 3 : Siva’s Friend Ravindran, his Wife and two kids Ranjit & Ranjan

As usual we did some research on the net and found two possible routes for Vellore.

Route–I : Bangalore > Hosur > Krishnagiri > Bargur > Natrampalli > Vaniyambadi > Ambur > Madhanur > Pallikondan > Vellore.
Total distance 225 Kms

Route–II : Bangalore > Kolar > Chittoor > Vellore. Total distance 215 Kms
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