Having read almost everything about Dhanushodi, My excitement was palpable when I boarded the van which was about to take us to the destination. I had to leave my bike few kilometres before Dhanushkodi because the path to the destination doesn't have a proper road and It can be reached only through loose sand.
Once the van was jam packed, our driver started the journey to the lost land. During the course of our journey I posed lot of questions about the land to our driver and he politely answered each and every one of them.
The journey to reach dhanushkodi was long and bumpy, Our first stop was at the tip of Dhanushkodi. By the time we reached the tip the wind was so ferocious that it blew sand on our face. Our van driver who was now a friend to me told me that I was standing on strip of sand which seperated two oceans(Indian Ocean and Bay of bengal). The place was so blue and water was so pristine, On my one side the wave was so violent and the other side it was so calm. I spent half the time gaping at the beauty of the ocean and rest of the time I was hearing to the owling of wind which I took special liking to (strange taste).We stayed at the tip for half an hour and then moved to the lost land.
On reaching the lost land the feeling was surreal, I was running helter and skelter to catch the glimpse of most of the ruined places as the driver told he could not afford more than 30 minutes. On entering the ghost town there was Giant water tank, church, Post office.. all in a dilipidated structure. What was once a flourishing town is now nothing but a skeleton remains which serves as an warning of how an victim of nature would look like. while roaming around the ruined place I met a fishermen whose parents hailed from Dhanushkodi, He told us that the cyclone lasted only for a night but it was so ferocious that it washed away the whole town,somehow his parents saved him but couldnt save his grandparents. He also informed us how the sea receded during the night of tsunami(2004) which exposed them the submerged part of the town for few minutes. While I was there only for few minutes, The time I had spent here had huge impact on me. The ruins was in my memory for the rest of the day.
While moving from the town they were stones laid to our left for few Kilometers, The driver informed that those were the track trail. Prior to the 1964 cyclone there was boatmail operating between chennai to colombo, where the train would halt at Dhanuskodi and transport the passengers in ferry to Mannar, from where another train took them to Colombo.The tracks was destroyed during the cyclone.
Moving forward we spotted a place where they were large number of stones stacked at one place, I was informed that this was the spot where on that fateful night a passenger train carrying 115 passengers was washed away by huge waves.
Dhanushkodi might not be a place of everybody's liking but it left a huge impact on me. One thing I had learned on visiting this place is How much ever we have evolved in the last few hundred years we are still at the mercy of mother nature.
