Adam’s Bridge

Mike – We are at the South Eastern tip of India in a town called Rameswaram. We had heard of this place nearby called Adam’s Bridge, which on paper, looked really awesome. Basically, it was described to us as a narrow strip of sand dunes stretching out ten kilometres from the Indian shore towards Sri Lanka. It’s where the Indian Ocean meets the Bay of Bengal. Theoretically, you could take a swim in the Indian Ocean, and walk twenty metres to the other side of the dune and swim in the Bay of Bengal. This was very appealing to us.

The bonus was at the end of the sand dune where, on a clear day, you could see the coastline of Sri Lanka, a mere twelve kilometres away.

Maybe we had unrealistic expectations, because in my mind, the place was a real let-down. The beach on both sides was flanked by families of Indian tourists, which is a boon if you’re looking for a quiet, clean stroll along a beach. The tide line was littered with plastic bottles and lone sandals.

We’d encounter a family of ten people where each one of them knew only one sentence of English – usually something along the lines of “Hi. What’s your name?” – and each member of the family would be compelled to talk to you one-by-one. And, then they’d want a picture with each of them. And, then they’d want you to take a picture of them. And, when you started walking away they’d take pictures of you walking away. It was all a very hilarious experience for them, but grew quite tiresome for us.

The minute you sit down or stop walking this will happen, almost instantaneously.

It’s as if they’ve never seen white people before. Maybe they haven’t. Sometimes it feels like we’re part of some private joke. This is something I’ll definitely remember about India. Meh. Could be worse, I guess.

Teg - The walk was way longer than we had anticipated it to be, which wouldn’t have been to much of a problem except that we had told our driver to wait only a couple hours. So an hour into the walk, once we realized there were still many, many kilometres to go, we decided to turn back and have a little swim (Mike). This was a funny moment because as soon as Mike took to the water, another man eagerly followed him in, and three of his friends planted there bums a couple of meters away from mine, where friendly Q&A waved in.

We had planned to walk along the shores of the Indian Ocean on our way out and walk the shores of the Bay of Bengal on our return in. However, surprisingly, the shores of the Bay to Bengal weren’t even shores really. There were sand dunes that separated the two shores the whole way along, and that whole other side was used for jeeps and trucks that were carrying loads of people.

Besides the bridge. We were very thankful of the rain-free time we spent in Rameswaram. Apparently there had been some speculations on a possible cyclone (hurricane) in the making.

For how loud this town was in the mornings (all the car/bus honkings), you’d think it was a much larger and busier place. Yet it wasn’t. There wasn’t much else for us to do here but circle the towns beautiful temple, and wander the streets searching for a place to eat.

Some time ago, we had discovered that hotel restaurants are the most legit and least likely to leave their mark on our stomach and thus, on our trip lol. Luckily enough, this town was filled with newly finished hotel fronts, all with quite the modern style, providing us with an array of options come meal time. Orrr so we thought…Hahaha! Our hopes were initially quite high at these sites, but soon enough we discovered (after entering oh so many hotels) that none of the hotels in the town had restaurants…To sum it up, we had very few meals here.

One of the many, newly finished hotel fronts.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mproud3/RameswaramAndAdamSBridge#