The night had been really windy and rainy. Even when I woke up in the morning it was raining/drizzling on and off. That morning I decided to walk around toward the other side of the island, I believe it was the northern part, where the lagoon was very narrow. Close to sunrise I strolled along, picking any interesting corals off the beach on the way. This is the side where the water purification plant is set up and the shore is quite steep, outlined with concrete blocks to prevent erosion. After some pictures and a peaceful walk among dead coral and the occassional camouflaged big crabs I returned to the cottage.

Although the rain did let up in the morning, the wind continued to ruffle the sea. It was so windy, that for the first time in the week I could see whiteheads in the lagoon area. It was probably the brightest day during my trip as well and the color of the water was beautiful. Ironically the sun was shining down real bright, and the sea wasn't fit to swim at all. We were expected to leave at around 15:00 anyway so no point in thinking about swimming anyway. However, the ship came in later and it was after dinner at about 20:30 when we headed for the jetty to load ourselves into the ferry to the ship. The ferry took its own sweet time gathering and waiting for all the passengers and kin and it was past 21:30 by the time we got into the ship even. Finally cast off at around 22:00. Onwards to Cochin and probably another sea-sick 20 plus hours sitting in that god-forsaken seating hall in the ship!

-- Ashish Bhambhani

This day again the weather wasn't at its best. The sun was intermittently hiding behind clouds, the wind was picking up on and off and consequently there was a decently strong current that hindered ease in snorkelling. Two of us went snorkelling that day, and the boat was taken much farther into the lagoon this time. The coral here was mostly a spiky kind, in big "garden" formations... brown spikes with purple tips. There was one area with lots of dead coral as well, and some area with dredging waste. But, like every time in the sea, I still saw new interesting species. This particular day I saw another big gray eel, and it wasn't as well concealed as the last one I had seen, so I spent some time observing it from a close distance. The area we were swimming this time was farther out so I guess thats why we saw more bigger kinds of fish. Of the bigger fish I saw - One more big lion-fish, big yellow-dark blue horizontally striped fish, a small shoal of pointy nosed gray fish (maybe wrasses), something that looked like a giant parrotfish, two fat brown camouflaged porcupine fish. At a certain area there was several large spider-conches spread sparsely, each grown over with something that looked like moss. All throughout this area there were several giant clams, most of them had blotched brown-black lips, but some had bright blotched purple-black lips.

In time, we drifted with the current towards the shore and wound up after maybe a couple of hours of swimming. The rest of the day was just relaxing as usual and gorging on the yummy local food the resort was feeding us.

-- Ashish Bhambhani

Woke up just in time for "idli"s in breakfast. Everyone was feeling lazy and the weather wasn't all that fantastic either. So I decided to do some snorkelling on my own in the mini-reef closeby. It wasn't the best weather, being a bit rainy and cloudy.. the reef didn't brighten up as much without direct sunlight. But since the other folks were out relaxing and doing their own thing, I thought might as well swim.

I saw a big fat porcupine fish, and the 2 big lion fishes that I had seen earlier. The new thing I saw that day was a big black sea urchin with big spikes, and a sea anemone with really fat tentacles and a thick club-like ringed end on each tentacle. Saw some interesting looking triggerfish and some big fish with snout-like protrusion on their heads and some with a pointy protrusion (similar to a sword-fish but not as long). There was other interesting big shiny white fork-tailed fish that I spotted that day. Since the light wasn't too great I returned in an hour or so, and decided to take out a kayak.

The wind wasn't exactly calm and there was a decent current in the sea that made it hard to propel the kayak. I had to paddle hard and keep paddling to keep the kayak from drifting. At a certain point I was just resting when some 50 feet away a big head popped out from the water... I could make out the shape of a very big brown turtle with its spotted brown head floating out. It stayed up for a few seconds and vanished. I paddled the kayak forward a bit farther into the sea and saw another big head pop up in the distance. Tiring a bit I let the kayak drift diagonally toward the coast. Suddenly a smaller turtle surfaced not 20 feet from the kayak... I tried to follow it, but it didn't stay up more than 10 seconds, and dove down. An interesting experience seeing the turtle at so close.

After some more drifting and some resting I managed to tiredly pull the kayak onshore. The evening was lazy again, reading and just hanging about doing nothing. Come night and there was news of more delay of the ship and more headaches/discussions regarding rescheduling of return tickets. Plenty of drama and negotiations and pressure for the night.

-- Ashish Bhambhani

After having read a bit late into the previous night I wasn't upto getting up early to watch the sunrise. So I woke up just in time for a breakfast of omelettes. Looked like the sun would shine and wont be too much windy so we again decided to obviously snorkel. Today the two ladies, although still not very comfortable with swimming or snorkeling were also intent on trying it out. So off we went in the glass-bottomed boat, and asked to be taken to the big reef today (about 120-150 meters from shore).

We stopped the boat near one of the big "potato coral" formation and started snorkelling. This particular formation was easily 20 feet across and I was standing on it at times, till the current made me drift/step away. There were lot of bright orange and bright purple small "christmas tree" thingies on this one. This area of the reef was much more densely grown and had more fishes swimming through and hiding in the crevices in the corals.. pretty! Within 15 minutes of entering the water, however, the weather changed abruptly. The wind picked up and so did the currents, making it difficult to just float about and watch. So we were recalled into the boat and started back towards the shore, by that time it had started to rain. As we moved closer to the coast, the rain and wind really picked up! Made it hard for us to make distance in that kinda weather so we slowed down... everything was looking beautiful though - the waves seemed like they were almost stationary, a sea of lumps of rippling jello, the incessant pounding of big rain drops flying off them in a dense spray, the shore blurred by the heavy rain, the coconut tree line looking like a hazy line hovering above the horizon - all in all it was strikingly like wind blowing sand through desert dunes, except only this was water, and our boat seemed to be just rocking on the "dunes" not moving even though the motor was running. All in all a strange, powerful, thrilling scene yet serene and cooling!

The rain vanished as rapidly as it had come though, leaving behind a sun bright enough that we could see clearly in the water. So turned around and stopped over another spot this time, again in the big reef. This time the better weather was for keeps, and we floated/drifted around for a couple of hours or so. The point where we dropped off was again close to a potato coral pretty close to the surface. After following some of the usual butterfly and cleaner fishes I reached the shallow coral and stood on it precariously for a few seconds.. swimming back against the gentle current to get back on it again. I finally popped off it and floated around only to be shocked to find that the very crevice that I was standing next to had a big gray moray (eel) quietly poised in it. The big guy would recede in the crevice and once in a while move out slightly.. its deep mouth was open, an almost garish but inadvertent display of its rows of sharp nail-like teeth, as it opened and slightly closed its mouth "breathing". The moray was pretty thick after the head, I could make out, and I kept a safe distance, but it never came out. I just watched fascinated for minutes. I looked up and called Mithun over to check it out and then moved around to explore some more. I was tempted to go back and check to see if the moray was still there. As I swam over a small patch of moss covered old and rocky looking coral my eyes caught something move... it was a split second and after a second it realized that it hadn't so much as moved as changed color! Looking carefully I spotted a big octopus, masterfully camouflaged the exact texture and colour of the rock like surrounding. It was parked completely in some spacious crevice, only its large head visible with the big eyes a different shade than its head that had comletely blended in. After floating almost motionless for a while the octopus came out a bit and I could now see it complete head along with the nozzle and flap moving as it breathed, as well some part of its arms with big suckers. Whenever I moved about a bit it would rapidly recede into the crevice, hiding everything but its well camouflaged head its two darker shrivelled looking eyes like 2 sores on the stone. I observed for a while more hoping it would come out more. With great difficult I pointed it out to Rajat, and moved away as he watched, to explore farther along the reef. They had moved the boat to a different point and I followed. Some time later I finally found a sea anemone that had a big and a tiny clown fish smilling carelessly through the tentacles, hugging them almost - the first spotting of "Nemo's family".. there were other anemone fishes running about through this one as well - black and black-white striped. Later the guide took us to another patch which was quite plain, with lots of sea grass around, but a few big corals towering close to the surface and some pretty big anemones growing on 2 sides of the coral. The coral was also tall enough to almost stand, except it was uneven and the current made it difficult. However I did manage to stand on one edge right next to a big anemone and (I had no fins on that day so) I poked my big toe about in the tentacles. The tentacles would sort of stick to the skin and then snap back as the current whipped them about... the same feeling as a thorny bush getting stuck on a sleeve and snapping free once you pull... but only at a minute level as if the thorns were too many and too small evenly distributed on the moss green fuzzy looking tentacles. The anemones had bright purple undersides and what looked like off-white coloured mouths. That was the last stop of the boat for the morning, and we packed in and left for the shore and another sumptuous lunch that was soon to be laid out.

I didn't see anything else exceptional during the rest of that swim... just a few more breed of lagoon fish - one of them puffed up and roundish like a puffer fish but not spiky and brilliant yellow colored, some big dark ones in a small school and similarly tiny bright turquoise colored schools near smaller corals, Nidhi apparently had spotted a starfish too. However as we were returning to shore, going over the sea grassy area, Rajat was looking down and suddently shouted "turtle turtle"... I didn't spot it under the boat since it was too fast, but we turned around. The turtle took off.. we could see a shadow speeding away in the water... it was pretty big, and dark colored. As we chased in the approximate direction we saw its big spotted head pop up over the water to breate, a couple of seconds only... and then again we saw its rough silhoutte speeding away towards deep sea, easily noticeable as it glided over the bright patches of the sea bed. It was fullsized I bet, but heck it was fast! That was the last interesting thing for the afternoon and we finally headed back.

I hadn't had enough for the day though, and I wasn't quite all that tired. Besides, since we weren't gonna do any scuba I wanted to do some free swimming and shallow diving. So once we got to shore I shed the snorkel and life jacket and swam to the small closeby reef with just goggles. Without the life jacket I was gettin tired sooner ofcourse but I could also dive in and swim through the fish schools which felt great! I swam about a short while, touched a few corals and sea cucumbers (all slimy feeling), till I felt tired and then escaped to shore.

The rest of the day was a bit lazy and quite usual, great food, loafing around, dozing and reading in the afternoon through evening, and so on. The sea had remained calm, and unlike earlier evenings there weren't many clouds that day. The sunset was balmy yellow behind a smallish cloud, and a bright orange before it dipped into a distant haze below a serene blue sky scattered with nimbus clouds.

-- Ashish Bhambhani

Morning I somehow managed to get my rear out of bed before 7. The idea being to take a few sunrise snaps.. but the sun was already out. Oh well... I ran around the bend of the beach and took a few snaps anyway. Found a place where people had dumped some coral in small heaps... interesting place to pick a few.

The day turned out to be the most interesting till then. A perfect essence of what could follow in the rest of the trip.

Post breakfast, we convinced the resort people to show us the reef. Since most of the population on the islands is Muslim, and the month of fasting was going on they were not allowed to enter the water, but they were nice enough to take out the glass bottom boat. Fortunately, the sun had come out and they agreed it would be a good time, so we rushed off to get ready for the boat ride. We entered the lagoon - our side of the beach was facing it anyway. Starting off towards the smaller reef closeby, we initially noticed that the lagoon was mostly shallow (about 12 feet or less deep), and there was lot of sea-grass growing close to the shores. The grass is what made up the green debris on most of the shore.

Soon though, within 20 meters from the beach, we could see coral debris too grown over with mosses and sponges. And sooner yet small growths of corals spread out over the bed, intermixed with grass and in some bare patches. But the wait lasted perhaps only 10 meters more :) or less. We slowed down over the smaller coral reef patch... enjoying the brilliant sea life (for the first time in my life!). This patch of the reef was easily few tens of meters along the shore and the corals structures were pretty big.. most of them 10-15 feet across, and supporting all the colorful fishes and characters that straightaway reminded me of "Finding Nemo". Our guide started rambling off names, as and when we were spotting new fauna - butterfly fish, giant clam, sea cucumber, cleaner fish, trigger fish, "brain coral", "potato coral", sea anemone to name the initial few. With a whetted appetite for more, we moved to the main reef that runs along for easily a kilometer. Here there was a larger variety of coral life and of fish as well, and ofcourse more densely populated than the smaller reef. We snapped whatever few pics we could through the glass, although it wasn't too clear, and decided that snorkelling would be much much better to observe the flocks of lively coloured animals.

So we borrowed some snorkelling gear from the nice folks of the resort. Since this was our first time snorkelling we were advised to not go far into the lagoon. The idea was to checkout the small closeby reef for the day. I was swimming around lost for a while, trying to locate the reef, apparently having overshot the area and swum past it. But then there was a friendly tap on the shoulder and one of the resort guys had come kayaking up to me, to point me in the right direction... or rather rightly into the direction of a visual paradise. That part of the reef was really pretty much a scaled down version of the bigger reef... all the same fauna, just fewer in number and smaller coral colonies. And well within the initial half hour itself I had seen most of the fishes shown in "Finding Nemo", but unfortunately no Nemo that day, I didn't spot any anemone in that area. But ofcourse there were multiple brightly coloured small lagoon fishes... trigger fishes, butterfly fishes, cleaners and a small variety of coral. I followed some big wrasses (with buttheads) for a distance, but was soon distracted by another fish with a pointy protrusion on its face (few inches long), looking perfectly like a marine version of Pinocchio. The most impressive that day, for me, was ofcourse seeing 2 big (full grown I'm sure) Lion fish with their fanned fins looking like big bird feathers. I stay watching them thrilled, for quite a while since they dont move much. I found out later that Mithun had seen a sting ray as well.

Around 1 pm is when I came out, and got ready for a delicious lunch. For all the lunches and dinners since that day there was always some preparation of Tuna also in the meal... yummy! After the lunch had settled in, I was still feeling spirited and decided to see more of the island. Just walking along the beach seemed like a good idea. Even though the fins had stretched my feet a bit much, and swimming so much after a long time, I was surprisingly feeling up to walking through the sand to check out what looked like a faaar end. My one mistake was not carrying water. But I guess my camera was all that was really needed. The walk was quite long and tiring (especially on the sand) but equally beautiful and scenic. Further up the beach there were more and more coral remains washed on the shore and I was getting closer to the edge of the lagoon where the waves were breaking. Some part of the shore was piled with stones and concrete blocks, but a farther part of the shore was indeed piled with (dead) coral! That pile was atleast a few feet high and 5-6 feet wide... enough to walk on it! Apparently a few decades ago, due to some hot currents, a large percentage of all the coral in Lakshadweep had died, and this would definitely be some of their washed up remains.

The weather was as unpredictable as one would expect a tropical island's to be. Some places would become shaded suddenly, or receive a brief burst of heavy rain, only to be sunny in the next few minutes. I guess I took about an hour to finally reach the farthest end that was visible from the resort. Here the waves were breaking right next to the shore and a stony reef was protruding from the tide. The breaking waves were quite loud at that point, and especially since it was quite windy. They were constantly pounding the shore - each wave beautifully rising to become a bright turquoise blue lighted by the low sun before turning into violent white froth and crashing into the reef just a few tens of feet away. Nearby was a helipad, and looked like some of the locals were baiting some birds next to the pad. Never saw anything like that before.  But by this time I was sensing the beginnings of feeling tired, so twas time to set off and retrace my steps back to the resort. The sun was lower in the sky but far from sunset. I was determined to make it back before sunset, in time to snap some cool pics of the sunset over the lagoon. And I did make it, after much thirst and wading through some of the beach which the tide had covered by then. Nothing better though, than resting in the cool evening breeze, watching the sun set and intermittently reading "The great train robbery".

Dinner again was a sumptuous mix of vegetarian, chicken and tuna prepared in local style. Night, after dinner, brought an interesting turn of events however. Our ship (Amindvi) had apparently not crossed all the islands in time on the way back. Weather had been bad I suppose. The result being that the ship's schedule would be delayed by one day atleast, meaning all of us would reach Cochin atleast one day late. A mixed blessing, since we could enjoy a day more on the island, but would have to reschedule all our tickets from Cochin. The only other option was to leave the same night on another ship, cutting short our entire vacation, and on top of that a 30 hour voyage with a brief stop at another island. A somewhat tempting option since rescheduling would be a hassle and money spent, but nevertheless not tempting enough. We all decided to stay back and wait out the delay.

-- Ashish Bhambhani

After I woke up in the ship, the worst of the sea-sickness had passed by, but the sea was still rough and my head was feeling like it was jello... urrrp. I went out to check out the deck. The lower deck was mostly wet due to the spray from the waves colliding diagonally with the hull. After another tedious half day of dozing on and off and avoiding watching the "Chak De India" movie, finally spotted the outline of some distant land. LAND HO! indeed.

The ship took its own sweet time approaching the island, rotating a couple of times before finding a place to anchor. No respite inspite of halting, the ship continued to rock, making us more anxious to get off. Soon after noon, within a half hour of the ship stopping, we and our stuff were all loaded into a large boat, and off to the island's main jetty. The boat circled around the island's lagoon and unloaded us at the jetty. The friendly people of the resort packed us into a car and a half kilometer ride away on the beach we found ourselves at the "resort". The accomodation wasn't anything great, but then again being a backpacker I didn't mind at all. It was clean and organized enough. Besides the fabulous beach and island just make up for it easily!!

As soon as I got onto the beach, I could not believe my eyes... the sand was really WHITE.. and the water really a deep turquoise (aqua marine) blue! Never seen such a beach anywhere else in India so far. Fantabulous!! The wind, the sun, the freshness ... just what I needed... and in hours I had completely forgotten what I was doing for the last 2 years... right upto the last week. Ignorance really is bliss sometimes! I settled in quickly, changed and ran out barefeet to enjoy the feeling of the soft white "sand" in my feet. "Sand" in quotes since it really isn't silica.. the entire island is made of coral remains, so the beach is really covered with tiny pieces of coral and shell - white calcium carbonate - I believe.

Greetings from a sage...
I stepped out of my room onto the beach. The rooms were right next to the beach. Only to find a little shell moving around. I picked it up to find a critter quickly withdrawing into it. All there was to be seen were 2 tiny claws packed perfectly into the shell. It was just your regular cutesy hermit crab. I held it up for a while, and let the crab crawl out and over my palm right into the sand. I entertained myself with its antics and shyness for a while before letting the poor thing run along.

There was a large shed sort of structure under which we would be served our meals and sit around talking into the evenings in the nice sea breeze. We had a late-ish lunch, since food wouldn't go in while on the ship. Evening was just some mingling, reading and off to bed.

-- Ashish Bhambhani