The Day 2: Sathyamangalam To Rameshwaram (400 kms approximately 8.30 hours)
As I informed in my previous post, we couldn't sleep properly, but somehow we got up at 6am and after filling our tummy with some yummy breakfast, we started our journey around 7.30am. I really appreciate Tamil Nadu government for the awesome state highways but only problem was each and every hoardings or sign boards were in Tamil (state language). Road between the paddy fields and passing through villages view was really mesmerising.
After riding for a few miles we got NH 44 (longest national highway of India). As per the plan we reached Madurai for lunch. By the time we reached there we were already dehydrated because of the hotness of Madurai city :P It was nearly 40 degree Celsius. We found one good restaurant out side the city. The owner was a young woman and she was very friendly. She suggested us to taste the famous drink of Madurai "Jigarthanda". After an amazing lunch we decided to take some rest and leave around 3pm as it was really hot to ride.
At 3pm we started our ride as the weather was beginning to get a bit cool and we knew that we would miss the sunset at Dhanushkodi if we reach late. Without wasting any time we started our ride and had already decided to take less breaks so that we can cover the distance faster.
Almost 100 Kms before Dhanushkodi, on our left side, we could see small mountains covered with snow. For sometime we felt that we were in north India :P However it was just salt evaporation pond and since it was our first experience, we decided to stop and click some pictures.
Thanks to enjoying a bit more at the salt place, we couldn't make it for the sunset at Dhanushkodi. However, we enjoyed the sunset around 40kms before Dhanushkodi.
When we reached Rameshwaram it was 7pm and we had not booked the stay and it skipped our mind that it was a long weekend. We tried almost all the hotels and everything was booked. Around 8.30pm we finally found a hotel but it didn鈥檛 have a restaurant. So after freshening up we hit the road in search for food. As it was already late, most of the restaurants were closed. We finally found one that was open but had minimum choices on the menu. We ended up having "MASALA DOSA" for dinner.
We came back to the room and decided to call it a day. We knew that we had to wake up early as Dhanushkodi was around 25kms away and we wanted to make it for the sunrise at the end point.