Between India and about. Ceylon, literally at the very surface, is a strange sandbank that connects the island and the continent. Mohammedans call this sandbank Adam's bridge, and Hindus call Rama's bridge. The facts show: the bridge is man-made …
Between India and about. Ceylon, literally at the very surface, is a strange sandbank that connects the island and the continent. Mohammedans call this sandbank Adam's bridge, and Hindus call Rama's bridge. The facts show: the bridge is man-made …
Strange shallows
The Muslim name is associated with the fact that the followers of this religion believe that Adam, expelled from paradise, descended to earth in Ceylon.
And to the continent, to India, he crossed this strange sandbank, so similar to a bridge.
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Hindus believe that this is really a man-made bridge, built in time immemorial by order of Emperor Rama by an army, imagine, monkeys led by the king of monkeys Hanuman. According to the Ramayana, led
Nala is the son of the legendary divine architect Vishvakarman, and Rama's troops crossed this bridge to Sri Lanka to fight its ruler, the demon Ravana, who kidnapped Rama's beloved maiden Sita. On Arab medieval maps, it is marked as a real bridge overlooking the water, along which anyone could cross from India to the fertile island. The situation changed in 1480, when, as a result of a strong earthquake and a violent storm that followed, the bridge sagged and partially collapsed. However, the Portuguese and British still referred to it on maps as a man-made structure, dam, or bridge.
The length of the bridge is almost 50 kilometers, its width ranges from about 1.5 to 4 kilometers, the depth of the seabed
around the structure - 10-12 meters. Most of it is hidden by water, sometimes at a depth of more than a meter. So even now it is quite possible to walk along it from beginning to end, either wandering along the stone canvas knee-deep in water, then going deep up to the waist and more.
The only major obstacle is the so-called Pambas Pass between Rameswar Island and Ramnad Cape, which is accessible to small merchant ships. Few travelers who decided to make such a transition have to use all their swimming skills here. For those who are not strong in this, it is better not to walk on the bridge at all - the strong current through Pambas strives to carry the daredevils into the open sea.
Cursed channel
Large ships are still forced to sail around Sri Lanka, which takes an extra 800 kilometers, which is 30 hours of travel. To solve this problem, back in 1850, the English commander Taylor proposed to build a canal through the Rama bridge. In 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru wished to implement this plan. Since it is somehow unethical to destroy the sacred places of one's own people, the government of the country declared in the Supreme Court of India that there was no historical evidence of the construction of the Rama bridge. Ramayana though
a holy book, but somehow it doesn't count. But real passions over the construction of the canal flared up already in the 21st century, when the Setusa Mudram corporation was formed for this. She even started construction work at the site of the future canal, but for unknown reasons, some of the dredgers were returned to the port due to breakdowns, including bucket teeth. An unexpected storm scattered the ships involved in the construction and did not allow work to continue. Hindu believers immediately stated that it was the monkey king Hanuman who was guarding his creation. To the northeast of the bridge is the rugged and dangerous Polk Strait with its storms and cyclones, and to the southwest is the calm Manara Bay with clear emerald water. The Rama Bridge separates them and mitigates the dire consequences of cyclones and tsunamis. So, according to scientists, the tsunamiwhich hit India in 2004 and claimed tens of thousands of lives was greatly weakened by the Rama Bridge.
Without this ancient "dam", there could have been much more victims. Thousands of people have signed up to Save Ram Sethu. The defenders of the bridge propose to accept an alternative project: to dig a canal along a large sandbank near the village of Mandapam. Whether they will be heard by the Indian government is not yet clear.
Facts show: the bridge is man-made
We are in many ways already accustomed to the fact that legends and myths often hide reality and long-turned pages of the past of our planet. Nevertheless, the images that NASA released several years ago surprised even the residents of Sri Lanka and India.
On them, with all the clarity that modern photographic equipment gives, you can see a real bridge between the continent and Ceylon. After the NASA images were published, the Indian newspaper Hindustan Times reported that the images obtained by American satellites were proof of the reality of Indian tales, and that the events narrated by the Ramayana, including the construction of the Rama Bridge, did take place. However, NASA chose to distance itself from any specific statements. Yes, satellite photographs clearly show the amazing geomorphology of the area. But, according to NASA experts, by themselves, "remote sensing images from orbit cannot provide specific information about the origin or age of the island chain and cannot determine human involvement in the origin of this object."