Journey
Ramayana — Epic journey
The Ramayana is one of India’s foundational Sanskrit epics, traditionally attributed to Valmiki. It narrates Rama’s exile, Sita’s abduction, the search for her, the alliance with Hanuman and Sugriva, and the eventual return to Ayodhya. Its stories, characters, pilgrimage sites, performing arts and retellings have shaped cultures across India and Asia.
Stops (23)
- Ayodhyā · Rama's Birthplace
Capital of Kosala on the Sarayu river, birthplace of Rama and seat of his father King Dasharatha of the Ikshvaku dynasty. This is where the epic opens, where Rama is denied his coronation through Kaikeyi's boon, and where he departs for fourteen years of forest exile. It is also where he returns to be crowned after Ravana's defeat. The modern city preserves the name unchanged and remains continuously inhabited on the Ghaghara.
- Mithilā / Janakpur · Sita's Birthplace
Capital of the Videha kingdom under Sita's father, King Janaka, philosopher-ruler of the Upanishadic tradition. Here Rama wins Sita's hand by lifting and stringing Shiva's bow at her swayamvara — the contest her father set to test her suitors. Lakshmana marries Urmila, and the other brothers marry Janaka's nieces at the same event. Janakpurdham, just across the Bihar border in Nepal's Dhanusha district, is the living identification, with a major Sita temple anchoring active pilgrimage.
- Shringaverapura / Gangā crossing zone · Ganga Crossing
Settlement of the Nishada chief Guha on the Ganga's north bank, where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana crossed the river with his help at the start of their forest exile. Guha's hospitality — feeding, sheltering and personally ferrying the party — is treated in the epic as a model of friendship across social boundaries. The excavated archaeological site north of Prayagraj shows confirmed early historic occupation, making it one of the more archaeologically grounded Ramayana identifications.
- Prayāga / Prayagraj/ Allahabad · Rama’s encounter with Bharadwaja
The Ganga–Yamuna confluence, where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana visited sage Bharadvaja's ashram after crossing the Ganga at Shringaverapura. Bharadvaja advised them on the route ahead and pointed them toward Chitrakuta as the ideal place to settle during their exile. Prayaga marks the transition from familiar northern kingdoms into the forest world of the Aranyakanda. The confluence has been continuously sacred, and its identification with the epic episode is unbroken across every tradition.
- Chitrakūt · Long stay in the forest
Where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana spent much of their early exile in a hut Lakshmana built beside the Mandakini river. It is also where Bharata came, after Dasharatha's death, to plead with Rama to return and rule Ayodhya. Rama refused but gave Bharata his sandals to place on the throne as regent. The modern pilgrimage town of Chitrakoot, straddling Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, preserves the identification with an active temple circuit at Kamadgiri hill.
- Gayā / Vishnupada · Rama performed father's last rites
Site on the Phalgu river where, tradition holds, Rama and his brothers performed the funerary rites (shraddha) for their father Dasharatha after learning of his death during exile. The Vishnupada temple marks a footprint of Vishnu on stone, and the Pretashila and Ramshila hills nearby anchor the wider ritual landscape. Gaya remains the pre-eminent site in India for pinda-daan ceremonies for ancestors, a practice whose Ramayana precedent is invoked in the local pilgrimage literature.
- Nandigarama · Bharata's Reign
Village near Ayodhya where Bharata lived as an ascetic during the fourteen years of Rama's exile, refusing to occupy the throne. He installed Rama's sandals as the symbolic ruler and governed from Nandigrama on their behalf, wearing bark and matted hair as his brother did. It represents one of the epic's most quietly powerful moral episodes — the renunciation of legitimate rule out of loyalty. Bharat-Kund near Ayodhya preserves the traditional identification and remains a modest pilgrimage stop.
- Dandakāranya · Wandering exile
The vast forest belt covering parts of present-day Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana and eastern Maharashtra, through which Rama, Sita and Lakshmana moved during the middle years of exile. It was a space of sages' ashrams, demon attacks and encounters that shaped the epic's central conflict. Rama's slaying of the rakshasa Khara and fourteen thousand of his troops here set in motion Ravana's revenge. The name survives in modern Indian administrative usage and in tribal-region toponymy.
- Nāsik / Panchavatī · Sita's abduction
On the Godavari at Nashik, where Rama built his forest hut in the grove of five banyan trees during the later exile. Here Ravana's sister Shurpanakha was disfigured by Lakshmana after her advances were rejected, triggering the war. Here too Ravana carried Sita away in his flying chariot after luring Rama and Lakshmana off with the golden deer Maricha. Panchavati is now a neighbourhood of Nashik, with Sita Gumpha and associated shrines anchoring the living identification.
- Lepakshi · Jatayu's fall
In Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, traditionally identified as where the vulture-king Jatayu fell after Ravana severed his wings while trying to rescue Sita mid-flight. Rama found the dying bird here and performed his cremation rites — a moment the epic treats with unusual tenderness. The name is popularly glossed from Telugu "Le, Pakshi" — "Rise, bird," Rama's words to Jatayu. A rock depression at the 16th-century Veerabhadra temple marks the spot, though Kerala and Tamil Nadu contest the identification.
- Pampā Sarovara / Pampa Lake · Meeting with Shabri
One of the five sacred lakes of the Puranic tradition, near Anegundi and Hampi on the Tungabhadra. On its banks Rama met the elderly ascetic Shabari, a tribal devotee who had waited her entire life to feed him berries she had personally tasted to ensure sweetness. The encounter, treated in the epic as a model of pure bhakti transcending caste, is the narrative hinge between the Aranyakanda and the Kishkindhakanda. It remains an actively visited pilgrimage stop today.
- Anjaneyanadri Hill · Hanuman's birthplace
Granite hill near Anegundi identified locally as Anjana's home and the birthplace of Hanuman, the vanara who would become Rama's most devoted ally and the courier who found Sita in Lanka. A steep stairway climbs to a summit shrine. Karnataka's tourism department has formally promoted this identification, though Andhra Pradesh's Tirumala hills contest the same claim, making it one of the more visible live civic disputes over Ramayana geography anywhere in the subcontinent today.
- Kishkindhā · Meeting with Sugriva and Hanuman
The vanara (monkey) kingdom, traditionally identified with the Anegundi–Hampi landscape on the Tungabhadra. Here Rama met Sugriva, killed the usurping vanara king Vali in single combat, and installed Sugriva on the throne — securing the vanara army that would search for Sita and eventually cross to Lanka. The pact between Rama and Sugriva is one of the epic's central political alliances. Vijayanagara-era rulers deliberately mapped Ramayana geography onto their capital, cementing the association through temple patronage.
- Rāmeshvara / Rameswaram · Rama's worship of Shiva
Island on the Palk Strait, where Rama installed and worshipped Shiva as Ramanatha before crossing to Lanka, and where he returned afterward to give thanks. The Ramanathaswamy temple, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas and among the four cardinal Char Dham sites, anchors the identification with a corridor of pillars considered the longest of any Hindu temple. The name is unbroken and the site has been continuously sacred, drawing pilgrims through every era of South Indian religious history.
- Dhanushkodi · Bridge to Lanka (starting point)
Southeastern tip of Rameswaram island, whose name means "end of the bow" — traditionally where Rama used the tip of his bow to mark the point from which Nala and Nila's causeway to Lanka would be built. It is the closest point on Indian soil to Sri Lanka. The town was devastated by the 1964 cyclone and remains largely abandoned, though it draws steady pilgrimage traffic to its ruined church and temple and to the sandbank where the causeway is said to begin.
- Adam's Bridge / Ram Setu · Bridge to Lanka
A 48-kilometre chain of limestone shoals stretching between Rameswaram and Mannar Island, traditionally identified as the causeway built by Rama's vanara army under the engineer Nala to reach Lanka. It is the single most physically visible piece of Ramayana geography, plainly readable from satellite imagery. Persian and Arab geographers from the 9th century referred to it as Set Bandhai.
- Lankā / Sri Lanka · Battle with Ravana
Ravana's island kingdom, capital of the rakshasa realm, where Sita was held captive in the Ashoka Vatika through the war-book of the epic. Here Hanuman leapt across the sea, found Sita, burned the city, and returned; here Rama's army landed after the causeway was built; and here the great battle culminated in Ravana's death.
- Nuwara Eliya · Ashoka Vatika
Where Sita was held captive. A modern Sita Amman temple marks the identification.
- Ravana's Cave · The concealment of Sita
Cave in the hillside above Ella in Uva Province, traditionally identified as one of the places where Ravana concealed Sita, or as a hideout for Ravana himself. Local tradition holds that a tunnel network once connected this cave with Ravana's palace and other sites across the island, allowing rapid movement.
- Ravana Falls · The concealment of Sita
A 25-metre cascade near Ella in Uva Province, traditionally linked to Ravana. One version holds that Sita bathed in the pool at its base during her captivity; another places Ravana's cave behind the falls.
- Divurumpola · The ordeal and the return of Sita
Site near Bandarawela in Uva Province, traditionally identified as where Sita underwent her Agni Pariksha — the fire ordeal — to prove her chastity after being recovered from Ravana. The name means "Place of the Oath" in Sinhala. A large bo tree at the site is treated as witness to oaths, a function still invoked in local Sri Lankan civic tradition. It marks the epic's most painful and contested moment before Rama, Sita and the army begin their return journey to Ayodhya.
- Rāvaṇa worship at Rāvaṇgrām, Vidisha · the other reading
At Ravangram in Vidisha district the Kanyakubja Brahmins of the village worship Ravana as one of their own, in a temple with a ten-foot idol lying on its back that local belief says must never be raised. Before a wedding both families lay the first invitation at its feet. The Ramayana has always been a field of positions rather than one story.
- Bhadrāchalam · Treta Yuga / 17th c. CE
Bhadrachalam on the Godavari carries the Dandakaranya chapter of the Ramayana — the forest where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana spent much of their fourteen-year exile. Temple legend names the ascetic Bhadra, son of Mount Meru, who chanted the Rama Taraka mantra on this bank waiting for Rama's return after he had found Sita. Vishnu later fulfilled the promise in Rama's form, forgetting that Rama was mortal and appearing with four celestial arms — the unusual four-armed sanctum iconography the temple is known for. The Qutb Shahi tahsildar Kancharla Gopanna (Bhakta Ramadasu) rebuilt the shrine in the 1670s and was imprisoned at Golconda for the diverted revenue.