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Sunrise at Rameshwaram |
ECR Photography Trip
It has been 4 years since I have done any outing with CTC
for various reasons. So when I saw the mail about a Photography Trip to
Kodiyakarai and Dhanushkodai, I thought it was too good to miss. So I
registered for it and was all set for the day.
If all goes well, then it is certainly not interesting! A
week before the trip, I went for a photoshoot on my own near Chennai. A couple
of days later charger of my camera stopped working! What good is a photography
trip without a camera?
I checked for any availability of the charger, but I won’t
be getting anything before the trip. Checked with a couple of friends if they
can lend me their camera. My friend Saravanan helped me with him camera a 3
lenses. Cannot be more thankful to anyone, I guess.
On the day of the trip, I reached the bus stand quite early
just to make sure I don’t get stuck in the traffic, and excitement of making a
trip to a place which I have been thinking of for a long time. Navaneethan and
Dinesh were already there and got introduced to them. So the other participants
also gathered and the team was ready to go.
The bus started from Chennai around 11:30pm on Friday.
Thanks to Dinesh and Navanee for booking a very comfortable bus. We reached
Vedaranyam at 7:00 AM in the morning. We had enough time to freshen up and
start for the day. Had breakfast at a local shop across the lodge and started
out to Kodiyakarai. After visiting the photo exhibition in the forest office we
headed over to the sanctuary.
We spent the entire morning in the Black Buck sanctuary, but
the bucks and birds weren’t much. The weather was also not helping much. It was
really hot and dry we spotted a few black bucks, a rabbit, a horse and a few
birds.
We reached the sanctuary around 3:30pm and ventured along
the shore hoping to get some good clicks of the flamingos. Unfortunately there
were only a handful of them and that too drifted far off from where we were. So
no good close-up photos of the great pink beauties. When everybody returned
back, I fell back for a few more minutes and was rewarded with about a hundred
flamingos flying towards me. I am really not sure how many had the opportunity
to view this beauty in this trip. I clicked a couple fo photographs and stood
fixed at the sheer beauty of the pink Greater Flamingos against the blue sky!
We took few photographs of some of the birds there and then
headed back to the vehicle around 4:30. We got on the bus back to Vedaranyam,
but on the way we stopped to visit the Rama’s pada. It is believed that from
this place Lord Rama was viewing the route to Lanka before they proceeded to
Dhanushkodi to build the bridge.
We spent a few minutes there and proceeded to Vedaranyam. We
boarded the public transport from Vedaranyam around 6:30 and proceeded to our
next stop at Pattukottai. We had a good dinner, freshened up and took another
public transport to Rameshawaram.
We reached Rameshwaram very early the next morning, around
3:30pm. Dinesh and Navaneethan managed to find a lodge where we can freshen up.
We were really quick to finish off and I and a few others started ahead of the
others to the sea shore to catch the sunrise with our lens.

After returning back, we finished our breakfast quickly and
proceeded over to Dhanushkodi in public transport. After reaching the town, we
had to take a van operated by the local group to reach to the tip of the land.
We can also walk the entire stretch. But given the weather and time constraint
we decided to take the van.
One should be there to know the beauty of the place. White
sands and emerald waters with lots of waders and pelagic birds along with some
raptors, was a beauty to watch. We again got busy clicking some photographs
even though the lighting was not very apt for photography! On the way back to
the town we also saw the ruined remains of the place which was hit by a
hurricane / tsunami sometime during the 1960s. We spent time till midday and
proceeded back to Rameshwaram.
After lunch some of us wanted to visit the temple. So we
rested in a local rest house “chatram”. Once the
temple was open around 3:30pm
we visited the temple and were back around 4:30pm. We then headed over to the
Pamban Bridge and took another round of photographs of the old engineering
marvel – the railway bridge across the sea. We also took a glimpse of the
setting sun.
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Pamban Bridge |
We headed over to the railway station, had a light dinner
before boarding the train. We reached back Chennai around 8:30am the next
morning with wonderful memories of the trip and few very good friends.
Following are some of the highlights of the trip for me.
- Public transports to almost all the places
- The Greater Flamingoes flying towards to in Kodiyakarai
- A visit to the historical place from where Lord Rama was reviewing his route with his army
- The beautiful sunrise at Rameshwaram
- Dhanushkodi
- Pamban Bridge and most importantly the time spent with new friends.