Madurai is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the subcontinent, and its skyline is still defined by a single structure: the towering gopurams of the Meenakshi Amman Temple. Built up over centuries under the Pandya kings and later expanded by the Nayaka rulers, the temple is dedicated to the goddess Meenakshi and her consort Sundareswarar — a form of Shiva — and their celestial wedding is still re-enacted each year as the city's biggest festival.

Inside, the temple complex holds a small city's worth of art: fourteen gopurams covered floor to ceiling in painted stucco figures, and the Ayirakkal Mandapam — the Thousand Pillar Hall — where nearly a thousand carved columns depict musicians, guardians and divine mounts. Getting properly lost in its corridors is, for most first-time visitors, the whole point of coming.

From Madurai the road runs southeast to Rameswaram, an island town connected to the mainland by the Pamban Bridge — opened in 1914 as India's first sea bridge, and still one of the most dramatic drives in the state. At its centre sits the Ramanathaswamy Temple, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shiva and, by tradition, the spot where Rama himself is said to have built a lingam from sand to seek forgiveness after his war with Ravana.

The temple is famous for the longest corridor of any Hindu temple in India — over 1,200 metres of sculpted pillars running around its perimeter — and for its twenty-two sacred wells, or theerthams, each believed to have a different taste and a different blessing. As one of the four dhams of the Char Dham pilgrimage, representing the south, it draws pilgrims from across the country year-round.

Beyond Rameswaram, the road narrows and the land itself starts to disappear. Dhanushkodi was once a thriving port town with a railway station, a customs office and a ferry link to Ceylon — until a cyclone on the night of 22 December 1964 tore through it with winds over 240 km/h, killing hundreds and washing the town off the map in a single night. It has stood abandoned ever since, its roofless shells now sitting between two seas. A short drive further is Arichal Munai, the very tip of the peninsula, where the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean visibly meet and the chain of limestone shoals known as Ram Setu, or Adam's Bridge, stretches out toward Sri Lanka, less than 30 kilometres away.