Dhanshkodi was a small town which was built by British to transfer the humans and the raw materials from India to Srilanka and vice versa. The town had good connectivity with rail and road. It had hospital, church, post office, railway station, temples etc. In the year 1964 a huge storm wave of 20ft came crashing on the town and destroyed the whole town, trains and the railway bridge all at the dead of the night. The Tamilnadu Government declared the town as a Ghost town and unfit for living. Currently only a small group of fisher folk reside there. The place is becoming a tourist spot and the old ruins of town are the only things that are left now.
Our vehicle was allowed only till a certain distance, after which we need to hire a small truck which is generally used by fishermen to bring their catch to the shore everyday. These mini Mahindra trucks are tweaked to run on the sand with maximum power and torque. we reached the tip of the island from where West of Jaffna is just 18 miles (by sea). After spending some time at this place we started a backward hike to the town, we were accompained by a guide (not really!! a man who had lot of talent and could have catapulted many big actors had he come to Kollywood). He explained the story of the town, different buildings and its ruins. As he talked we could imagine what a nice place the town would have been with shores on each side kissing the town and how people lived there and carried out there daily activities. My friends had some great cameras with which they experimented and tried their skill to get every shot of the town. After which we returned back the place where we had parked our vehicle. We then started our journey back. On the way we spent a quite evening on a beach where we were the only humans (and rest were crabs..) before we headed off to Ramanathpuram for dinner. This is a district headquaters which provided us food and lodging for two days.
After dinner we made some quick decisions on what next. This trip hadn't gone as per our plan. Intially when we started we had some bad time, first with TN Police for getting our fuels in the van. And then a puncture to our vehicle where in the jack slipped while changing the tyre. We had to manually lift it and place it on some wooden blocks before the driver could fit the tyre. The driver was another nammuna.. he almost killed us while returning. He dosed off while driving!! One of my friend who was awake requested him to stop driving and take a nap. Rightly, he stopped and took a long nap!!. We reached Bangalore the next morning after which I tried not to eat Idly, vada and dosa for another week. Both the days we had only these!!! ;)
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