Madurai & Rameswaram — Three Nights, Two on the Island

Into Madurai, a city laid out in concentric squares around Meenakshi Amman and inhabited for more than two millennia. The temple takes the afternoon — fourteen gopurams thick with painted figures, the golden lotus tank, and the Hall of a Thousand Pillars where each column is carved differently. The evening belongs to the closing ceremony: the image of Sundareswarar is carried in procession to Meenakshi's chamber, accompanied by drums and nadaswaram, and the doors are shut behind him. It happens every night and it is not staged for anyone.

South-east through dry cotton and palmyra country to the coast, then the sea crossing to the island. Ramanathaswamy in the afternoon: the outer corridor runs about twelve hundred metres with individually carved granite piers and painted ceilings, and the scale only registers once you are walking it. If you intend to complete the twenty-two wells, allow the better part of an hour and bring dry clothes — an attendant draws and pours each one over you in turn.

Out to Dhanushkodi early, before the wind gets up — nineteen kilometres of spit narrowing until the road ends between two seas. The town was destroyed by the December 1964 cyclone with great loss of life and was never rebuilt; the church shell and the railway remnants stand in the sand. Kothandaramaswamy temple, a few kilometres back, is the one building that survived. The afternoon covers the island's other shore sites and Gandhamadhana Parvatham, a low hill that is the highest point and the best overview of how narrow this place is.

A last morning on the island — the temple again at first light is a genuinely different experience from the afternoon, with the corridors nearly empty and the light coming in low along them. Then west across the bridge and back to Madurai, around four hours, for an afternoon flight or train. If time allows on the way, the Ramanathapuram palace and the Sethupathi collections make a reasonable break in the drive.