Amazing Andamans - Day 3

Today we crossed two frontiers, exceeded personal boundaries and went where we had never gone before. Today was the day when we had the perfect two course meal: Scuba Diving for Appetizers and Kayaking for Dessert.

The First Dive

The day dawned and we were up bright and early. It was the day we would experience our first dive. Just saying it sends thrills down my spine. We set off at 0700 for a brand new adventure. One that forced us to go beyond our boundaries and push our comfort limits. The constant thought in my mind was “Be Calm. Things can go wrong only if you are not calm.” The brief boat ride to Nemo’s reef saw a sudden downpour. The heavens showered us with their blessings in abundance as the skies opened up. The visual spectacle as you saw the rain approaching the boat across the open sea was one that would go down in record books. 

Feet by feet, we went below and then the show began. Surrounded by fish of different shapes, sizes and color, I felt like an intruder and voyeur looking at their lives. The first rule rings continuously in my head – no touching or moving anything only looking. Schools of little clown fish & butterfly swim around us.  I realized that I was wishing that I was a gecko so that I could rotate my eyes 360 degrees and see everything. 

As I start to recognize the different fish swimming by, I see a kind I don’t recognize. I dart a look towards my instructor and find him looking at the fish rivetingly. I make a mental note to check which fish it was once we surface. A slim fish with brown stripes – wonder what it could be?

As we approached a coral, a little damsel fish came out to face off with us. It was so cute and courageous – here was a little fish measuring about 3 inches facing off with two divers almost 400 times his size. He kept darting in and out around us trying to keep us away from his “zone”. Darting from left to right, top to bottom - as we moved so did he. 

School after school of fish passed us by. Sign after sign shown by the dive instructor were interpreted perfectly and varieties of fish were spotted. Unfortunately, we were under water and the ‘oohs’ & ‘aahs’ were audible only in our heads. The emotions felt were surreal. At times the feelings were so intense you almost forgot you had to breathe. You have a sense of complete calm and introspection as you descend and surround yourself with water and the beauty underwater. The beings under the sea ignore your presence and go about their lives but it remains a mystery as to how long this will all last. When will humans impact the beings under the sea to such an extent that their genetic coding makes them retaliate the moment they see humans invade their homes remains a question at the back of all our minds. The answer evades us and we can only hope that we never have to face such a situation. As far as they allow us to share their space, we should ensure we do not disturb the environs but just see the beauty and soak in the peace, stillness and the wonder of another world. 

The feeling under the sea gives you a high like no other.

As a giant clam opens and closes, a school of unicorn fish swim by majestically. The parrot fish show off their colors, like their ariel cousins, preening in the shallow waters. 

The corals boast of an era gone by. Global warming has ensured that corals across the world have died an untimely death. The beauty of their colors and the marine life that lived around them are now only folklore - stories that divers share over dives as they reminisce about the days that were.
 

The most beautiful part of the dive for me was when I was on the sea bed and I looked up – you could see layers of fish swimming almost like a six lane drive - no one switching lanes, no rash driving and no overreaching into others territories. The sun shining on the surface shimmered like stars. You were almost tempted to reach out and touch them. 

As I held on to my dive instructor’s hand for dear life, the serenity of the ocean envelopes me and leaves me with a wanting to come back for more. A promise made to the ocean and myself under water that I intend to keep.

We finally begin our ascent and slowly make our way back to the surface. As I bring my head out of the water and remove the regulator from my mouth, words start spilling out all at once. It takes me a few moments to gather my thoughts and my excitement about what had just happened. My dive instructor has a huge grin too as he shares my enthusiasm and the pure joy experienced. I begin to think about how long we were under and think it was around 15 – 20 mins. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the dive had lasted 57 mins. I remember the mental note I had made at the beginning of the dive and ask my instructor if he saw the fish too and went about describing it. And then I got the best info ever – I had seen a Chevron Barracuda, a species that is rarely seen in such shallow waters. Wow! The euphoria being felt just went up 300 notches.

As I remove my gear, I wallow in the shoulder deep water waiting for Medha to surface after her dive. Suddenly, some lyrics of a song sung by the crab Sebastian in “The Little Mermaid” to a calypso beat enter my mind:

“Just look at the world around you

Right here on the ocean floor

Such wonderful things surround you

What more is you looking for?”

What more indeed…… 

A Parsi, A Photographer and a Non-swimming Fish

A mangrove tour for 3 hours is all the poster said and we eagerly signed up thinking it would be nice to have a leisurely tour of the mangroves after a long morning of diving. Boy, were we wrong! We were told by our fearless guide, Tanaz, to come to the jetty and we were sure that a boat ride till the place where the tour starts is probably why. Wrong again. The tour started at the jetty. To our chagrin, Tanaz leads us down from the jetty to a shack which houses a couple of kayaks and then promptly starts to fit us in for life jackets. She then goes on to tell us that we were going to row for the next 3.5 hours through the open sea to the mangroves as we underwent the tour. 

A single three seater kayak is what we got into - Medha leading the way, Tanaz maintaining the balance and me being the maneuverer at the back. After a few practice moves, we set off - a little kayak bobbing away in the huge sea. As we rowed away, muscles we didn’t know existed started to first throb, then hurt and then finally burn but we soon developed a rhythm and our paddles stopped high fiving each other as we rowed.

In a little while, the splendour took over and the kayaking just slipped into the background. It felt like a mundane natural activity, like breathing, that was only serving the purpose of getting us into a world of blue skies, green mangroves and water so clear & still it was like a mirror.

The Mangrove Forests still the waters of the Open Sea too... and Kayaking with one of the handful of commercial women kayakers in the country was an indescribable experience...

Very soon, it was 3 girls having a blast on the kayak. Admiring every mangrove that we passed by, the silhouettes of the trees and clouds in the sky while trying to see the birds whose chirps were all we could hear to know their presence. We had entered a realm of beauty, stillness and pure wonder. 

Kayaking away!

As we glanced behind us, we could see the open sea in the distance and the mangroves closing in on the islet we rowed into. The mangroves almost seemed like closing in to ensure that we are protected from the currents and waves of the sea and gave us a feel of being in a cocoon of beauty. The waterways seemed endless as we took one turn after another, each one leading to untold adventures. Soon all the sounds from the mainland melted away and all we could hear was the silence. Our conversations dipped to whispered comments almost as if we didn’t want to disturb the tranquility of the place. Drifting along the mangrove line, we all had only one thought in our minds – it would soon get dark and we would have to return to civilization and life. 

The wonderfully calm Mangrove forest.... the silence could deafen one.....so the 3 of us could not stop chatting..

It seemed straight out of a movie and the fact that something so beautiful existed made us question reality. Nature was not supposed to be so ethereal, was she? 

The Sun began setting over the horizon and the rays begin casting shadows across the water and the sky like a painter given a canvas. Oranges, purples, blues, pinks filled the sky and the clouds joined in with their silver and gold linings. Hordes of birds began flying home as we set sail for the shore again.

Still Water for the best reflections.... and we had some of ours to share

As we created a camaraderie, the stories of our lives began to flow. Soon we were chatting away like long lost friends catching up over a cup of coffee at a popular diner somewhere. The difference being – this was the open sea and we were in one kayak. Over peals of laughter, we spun from one random topic to the next. We soon realized that the shore had suddenly come upon us.

As we dragged the kayak back onto the shore and took off our life jackets, we realized that we had pushed through the pain to experience a once in a lifetime moment – literally a Kodak moment. We made our way back to Vinnie’s island in silence, lost in our individual thoughts.

The tour ended but a friendship had just begun.

Our Been There Done That Tips

• If you diving for the first time, make sure you are comfortable with your dive instructor
• We would highly recommend, Dive India at Vinnie’s Island for your diving experience
• While the diving does not make you sea sick, the boat ride to the dive spots is rather turbulent and choppy. Make sure you have your sea sickness tablets handy 
• Hydrate yourself well between dives and make sure you stock on lots of protein and sugar
• A trip with Tanaz Noble is a must when you are at Havelock. Its isn’t often you get the chance to share a kayak with a National Champion
• Carry a spare Tshirt -  you tend to drip over your clothes as you pick up the nuances of kayaking