Scuba Part 2:Maldives

They say Diving in the Maldives is one of the best dive experiences. Since this was my first dive, registering that fact took a long while!

It didn't hit me till I saw the tiny islands from my airplane window.

The water! Oh so brilliant blue! Indigo and Blue, Indigo and Blue! Less than a kilometer away that too!

Yes, I had browsed websites about it, yes I checked it out on youtube, but no, I couldn't believe the blue!

I had never set foot on a boat before, let alone an island. Fun trips in Goa and rafting on multiple occasions are a different thing altogether..What am I talking! Here I was on what is probably the world's most beautiful string of islands! I was in the Maldives!

Among the bunch of islands collectively called Maldives, my dive center at the Embudu Village was located a hop, skip and jump from the Taj Exotica Resort Island.

While waterborne, Motion sickness is a grinch. They say its all in the mind really, but after a meal, when the boat you're traveling in impersonates a pendulum, the mind has no say. However, the 45 minute boat trip from the airport to our island was tackled with, without any mind/body revolts; they didn't get the time to react, too struck by the beauty of the blue.

We were to dive the following day as there is always a twelve hour gap between your flight and the dive, so everyone jumped in with their snorkel and mask. It was two at noon, the sun was at its zenith and I was too overwhelmed with the scene. It almost felt like a soap bubble, broken if touched! However, Anees and my dive buddy Remu pushed me and then I finally jumped in.



Potent salt water! In my nose, mouth and eyes! It didn't help that I was an average swimmer and the fins I was wearing suddenly seemed to pull me down! Panic! It took me a while after that to adjust breathing with the snorkel and keep afloat while moving the fins. But as I gradually calmed down and opened my eyes, the scene I witnessed blew me away!



A huge shoal of Groupers inches away from my nose, a Parrot fish or two staring me in the face, a bored baby Shark with the look, 'there comes another sloppy human,' changing course, a Sword fish quickly darting by, a fleeting glimpse of a Sting Ray! A whole new World! But the corals; pink and lilac, they were the icing on the cake.

I was aware that over the next five days, we were to repeat the same tasks like in the pool back home, the thought of being in open waters made me very nervous though.But I need not have worried to begin with, everything was planned and organised so beautifully and each time we reached between 15-18 feet depth, you had just no space for worries. The extent of fascination was hypnotic!



Over the span of five days we saw a variety of stunning fish including Clown fish(of Finding Nemo fame), turtles, huge manta rays and a small but mesmerising ship wreck!



I panicked to begin with, was hesitant on the first dive, attempted to shriek underwater with glee while playing hide and seek with a clown fish, was reprimanded for chasing a turtle and finally was christened as a Diver while wearing a mask and snorkel with bear poured down through it!

Yay! Am officially a diver!


Post Maldives, I tried the dive center in Fathiye, Turkey; but the experience wasn't as exciting as Maldives mainly because of the lack of corals and very few fish. But there's lots more to see out there, many dive destinations like Egypt, Mauritius, The Bahamas and Thailand to name a few. But the first time I opened my eyes underwater and saw at least a hundred fish staring at me.. that sight, I shall never forget!

I started off with the best, looking forward to a lot more!

(Photo curtosy Anees Adenwala and Aniruddh Kasliwal)

Scuba Part 1 : Mumbai

July, 2009. It's funny how you can exist in multiple spheres at one time.

Here I was, mid way through an MBA, in between assignments, Maggi and chai; a huge pile of books, fake balance sheets posing fake profits, the best drug for the worst sleep...My screen beeps with a new desktop theme and I wake up from my slumber. I see a 13" screen full of blue, a dolphin bubbling by, an Orca gushing out in glee and a diver, a scuba diver a silent witness to the scene ...

Well, most of that was my slumber driven imagination, inspired by a static desktop underwater picture, but my scene post MBA was set. I don't need too many signals to hear the Calling.

Cut to September 2009, The Orca Dive Club Office in Mumbai. Anees Adenwala, an underwater videographer and my soon to be Scuba Guru handed me a 'Scuba Diving Kit' and a set of forms to be filled, Et cetera, Et cetera. All I'am thinking is, Comeon! Just tell me when do we begin!!

In all, it takes 8 practice dives to be certified as an open water diver. The first four dives are pool dives, done in controlled environments, so as to learn all the basic communication signals under water, correct usage of gear, fining technique and getting acquainted with the environment. This is followed by four dives in the sea, the exercises remains the same, but the experience is something else entirely.

Practice session, Day 1: Okay, so there's the Buoyancy Control Device (BCD), a jacket that holds all your gear in place; the air cylinder, the mouth piece and octopus, your gills for the sojourn, a set of weight belts to help you sink and a pair of fins. To say the gear felt weird in the beginning is to state the obvious.

You have to learn to breathe in and out through your mouth. Your nose and eyes are covered in a mask . This is probably the only sport that encourages 'bad manners'. You have to spit into your mask for a natural de-fog fluid. The constant breathing in through your mouth piece and sending out bubbles as you breathe out is called 'bubble making' in kid lingo.

I was amazed with the things you can do in your club pool! Ever played power frisbee under water? Han! Han!

Practice session, Day 2: "All you want to do is goof around," says Anees, indicating towards the book and chart; yes I had to study. Way better than Balance Sheets I thought, and this was SCUBA, so what the hell! Terminologies, hand signals, a dive chart about interval diving, nitrogen levels and depth, session three and four went on thus.

Says he,"It's vital to know the exercises I'am teaching you today," as I slip into the heavy, heavy-duty (15kg) gear. As we descended into the deep dark end of the pool, he sits mid-water in padmasana while I struggle to float i.e. attain neutral buoyancy! "Oh not to worry," he says, "you'll be just fine in the ocean."

Right.

A few head-first (instead of foot-first) dives, gulping a lot of chlorinated water, rubber sharks and Frisbee games later, I was set to hit the ocean.

As the cliche goes: or so I thought..