Rameshwaram with Ma and Papa

Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah raised it in 1591, at the centre of the new city he was laying out. The story usually told is that he had prayed for the end of a plague and built this where the prayer was answered — four arches facing four roads, a mosque on the top floor that most visitors never reach.

The tower over the sanctum is said to have passed from Brahma down the solar line to Rama, who gave it to Vibhishana after the war on the condition that he not set it down before Lanka. Vibhishana stopped on this island for his evening prayers, put it down, and it never moved again.

Ranganatha stayed, but faces south, towards Lanka. The whole story exists to explain why a Vishnu temple points the wrong way.

Finished around 1010 under Rajaraja Chola, and still the plainest statement of what that empire could do. The vimana rises about sixty-six metres, and the granite it is built from is not local — it was brought in. The capstone is said to have been hauled up a ramp several kilometres long, and a village along the supposed route still carries a name meaning scaffold hollow.

The walls carry Rajaraja's own inscriptions: endowments, land grants, the names of the dancers and musicians attached to the temple. Very little of that survives anywhere else in such detail.

The palace passed from the Nayaks to the Maratha Bhonsles in the seventeenth century, and its most interesting resident was Serfoji II — a king educated partly by a Danish missionary, who read in several languages and collected obsessively.

The Saraswathi Mahal Library he left behind holds tens of thousands of manuscripts on palm leaf and paper, including medical notes recording his own attempts at treating patients. It is one of the oldest libraries still standing in Asia.

The Maratha king Venkoji is said to have dreamt of the goddess telling him she was waiting in a punnai grove outside the town. He sent men to look, and she was found in an anthill there. The temple was built on the spot and takes its name from the grove.

This is the other half of the Srirangam story. Ganesha, disguised as a cowherd boy, is the one who persuaded Vibhishana to set the vimana down. When Vibhishana realised the trick he chased the boy, who ran up this rock and revealed himself at the summit. That is Ucchi Pillayar, the Ganesha at the top.

The rock itself is among the oldest exposed formations anywhere, far older than anything built on it.

Both of them worshipped the lingam beneath the white jamun tree. The elephant carried Kaveri water in its trunk and bathed it every morning; the spider spun a canopy overhead to keep off the sun and the falling leaves. Neither could recognise the other's devotion — the water tore the web apart, the web offended the elephant. It ended badly for both of them.

Shiva liberated them anyway. The spider was reborn as Kochengat Chola, the red-eyed king, who is said to have built seventy temples with their sanctums raised too high for an elephant to enter. Thiruvanaikaval means the holy elephant grove.

She was born to the Pandya king with three breasts, and it was said the third would disappear the moment she met the one she was to marry. She grew up a warrior and conquered in every direction until she reached Kailash and met Shiva. The third vanished. Their wedding is still the city's largest festival.

Koodal is an old name for Madurai. The Ashtanga Vimana here holds Vishnu three times over — seated, standing and reclining, stacked in the one structure. Most temples give you one form; this gives you the whole argument at once.

The poetess Avvaiyar, old and tired, sat under a naval tree. A cowherd boy asked whether she wanted roasted fruit or unroasted. Amused, she said unroasted. He shook the tree, the fruit fell into the sand, and she blew the dust off before eating.

So you wanted it roasted after all, he said — since she had blown on it as if it were hot. She understood then who she was speaking to.

Opened in 1914 and the first bridge in India to cross open sea. The central span was built to lift so that ships could pass beneath it, worked by hand.

In 1964 a cyclone destroyed Dhanushkodi at the end of the island and took a passenger train with it. The bridge itself survived, and was carrying traffic again within weeks.

Ahiravana carried Rama and Lakshmana off to the netherworld, where the only way to kill him was to put out five lamps burning in five directions at the same moment. Hanuman took five faces at once — his own, and those of Narasimha, Garuda, Varaha and Hayagriva — and blew them all out together.

Rama came here after the war to be free of the sin of killing Ravana, who was a brahmin. Hanuman was sent to Kailash to fetch a lingam and was late; the hour would not wait, so Sita made one out of sand and it was installed.

Hanuman arrived with his afterwards. It stands beside the other, and by Rama's own instruction it is worshipped first.

Before building the bridge to Lanka, Rama is said to have set up nine stones in the shallow water here and worshipped the nine planets for a safe crossing. They are still standing, and at low tide you walk out to them.