Dhanushkodi is a ghost town on a narrow sand spit at the easternmost point of Pamban Island, roughly 20 kilometres from Rameshwaram. The 1964 cyclone destroyed the town completely — the railway station, the church, the post office, and a few hundred houses — and the ruins have been left largely as they fell. The site sits where the Bay of Bengal meets the Palk Strait, with Sri Lanka's coast visible on clear days about 30 kilometres across the water.
Getting there requires hiring a jeep or shared vehicle from Rameshwaram; the track runs through sand dunes, salt flats, and small fishing communities. The beach is long, clean, and almost deserted by most Indian standards. Walking among the ruins — the roofless church walls, the collapsed station platform, the outline of the old town — has an atmosphere quite unlike anywhere else on the subcontinent. Dhanushkodi also holds religious significance as the point from which Rama is said to have set out across the sea to Lanka.