Dhanushkodi, at the easternmost tip of Rameswaram island, is a hauntingly abandoned ghost town, its buildings reduced to skeletal ruins by a devastating 1964 cyclone that killed hundreds and rendered the settlement permanently uninhabitable. The narrow strip of land, with the Bay of Bengal on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other, offers a genuinely dramatic, stark coastal landscape, and the site's proximity to Sri Lanka — visible on exceptionally clear days — adds a further point of geographic interest.
According to the Ramayana, this was the point from which Rama's forces built the mythical bridge to Lanka, giving Dhanushkodi religious significance layered atop its more recent tragic and dramatic modern history, making a visit here a combination of pilgrimage, natural spectacle and sobering disaster memorial.
A devastating cyclone in December 1964 destroyed Dhanushkodi entirely, killing an estimated 1,800 people including passengers on a train swept away by the storm, and the government subsequently declared the town uninhabitable, leaving its ruins abandoned ever since.
October to March.
About 20km from Rameswaram, roughly 30-40 minutes by road.
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