Andamans: Green Waters n Blue Skies

After planning for years, finally I managed to make this a reality. We(3 friends n me) booked a flight to Andamans about 1.5 months in advance and then I started to look for a place to stay at and a dive institute to dive with. After talking to a lot of friends and researching on tripadvisor.com, I finally zeroed down on Barefoot Scuba and DIveandamans(Island Vinnie's). I sent a mail to both of them, but it was Barefoot's instant responses that made sure that I would stay and dive with them.

As I had already dived in Phuket, Thailand I wanted to do a certification course now. Then came the complications. We were flying into Port Blair on 6th noon and flying back on 10th morning. In all, I had just 3 full days there. But the certification course required 4 days. I spoke to Barefoot people and they suggested that I do e-learning to save a day which I actually did. Next came the issue of flying back. Somehow, the flights back from Port Blair are so scheduled that the last flight leaves before 1st ferry from Havelock reaches Port Blair. So we had to book the expensive but brilliant seaplane to come back from Havelock on 10th morning and fly back to Delhi.

DAY 1: After researching a bit on places to stay in Port Blair, we reached there on 6th morning and I asked the Taxiwala to take us to Megapode Nest to check for availability there. We got lucky and got 2 Nicobari Cottages there. Again, this was pretty costly but the cottages were brilliant with balcony opening onto the sea and a window opening into the woods. We wanted to visit Cellular Jail that very day, but it being Good Friday, the jail was closed. So we visited Ross Island that day. The island is pretty small with ruins of british establishments there. This was their headquarters in Andamans and the place from where they enjoyed while our freedom fighters toiled in the jail. We came back from there in just an hours and enjoyed our awesome balcony view for the evening.

DAY 2: Next day, we left for Havelock in Makruzz. The sail was pretty beautiful but they wouldn't allow the passengers to go onto the deck which made the 1.5 hour ride quite boring. After taking a small nap, we docked onto Havelock Jetty and I immediately took notice of the green waters. I had assumed Havelock to be a bit sparsely occupied but it was full of tourists and a number of auto rickshaws were there to take us to our resort. Once at the resort, I immediately started with my course and learnt how to use and maintain my scuba gear after giving a small test. After that, we went for working on a few skills on a beach to simulate confined water dives. Slept early to wake up for open water diving next day.

DAY 3: I woke up at 6 and after having some fruits for breakfast went to the dive shop where our diving gear was ready. Our first diving site was Lighthouse which is a reef near an old lighthouse. The sail to the divesite was beautiful with morning sun making the green reflections look just the perfect shade of green. Here we had a 45 min dive upto a depth of 11.2m with some skills training in between. During a skill in which I was supposed to let go off my regulator and breathe using my buddy's alternate air source, I put the alternate source upside down into my mouth and failed to breathe. After fumbling a bit, I tried making an ascent to get air. Thankfully, my divemaster was quick enough to purge and put my regulator into my mouth before that. The relief of getting air to breathe when you have run out of it is incomparable to any other pleasures of life. Our next divesite was MV Mars which is a wreck bottomed at about 18-20m into the water. A wreck provides fishes plenty of places to stay n play around, so there were plenty of small fishes here. While swimming around the ship's deck and Captain's cabin, I tried visualizing what might have happened on that fateful night. After reaching back in our resort, we washed our scuba gear and got our first Dive Log, which we immediately filled and got stamped from our instructor. It was a tiring day, so we just chilled out in the resort and went to Full Moon Cafe in Island Vinnie's for dinner. The restaurant at barefoot Scuba, Cafe del Mar is pretty ordinary but decent considering its a resort totally focused on diving.

DAY 4: Today we were going to make deeper dives. Also, our divesite was pretty far from the resort. It took us about 1 hour to reach there. The sail took us around a couple of small islands and we couldn't just stop appreciating the color of the sea while also speculating on the possibility of salt water crocodiles in the marshlands. The name of our 1st divesite was i-95(we had no idea why it was called so). Here there were plenty whip corals which seemed like sticks planted into the bottom. Here we went to a depth of 17.4m and saw some long fin bannerfish and moon wrasse(failed to identify the rest of the fishes ). The real surprise awaited me, when we reached the surface. As I am not a good swimmer, so I was afraid of a swim-test of 200m required by PADI for this certification. We came up pretty far from our boat, and our instructor told us to remove our weight-belts and BCDs and swim to the boat using masks and snorkel. It looked tough as there was a slight current taking us away from the boat, but the fins and extra buoyancy provided by salt water made swimming much easier than in a pool and I managed to reach the boat!!  Next was a 10 min float test, which was a cakewalk thanks to salt-water providing buoyancy. Our next divesite is called The Wall as its a 50m deep almost vertical wall under the sea. There was a strong current here and loosening grip on our rope could have meant a tiring swim back to the boat. Thankfully the current was much weaker under water and we could enjoy our final dive without tiring much.

Today, I went to Radhanagar beach after coming back from the dives. The drive to Radhanagar or beach number 7 was very pleasing to the eye as we moved through what seemed like a jungle with very sparse housing to disturb us. This beach is ranked highly among the best beaches in Asia and it clearly deserves it. The sands are flawless and the beach is not littered like most other beaches in India. After enjoying the sunset here, we rode back to our resort to pack for our early morning departure from Havelock next day.

DAY 5: Although this sounds like the end of the trip, but even this was as serene as I could have dreamed of. We hopped onto the 8 seater seaplane and apart from the luxury it felt like, the aerial view of the islands provided us with the best pictures in the entire trip. Upon reaching Port Blair, we decide that we had just enough time to visit Cellular Jail. So we called our old Taxiwalla to come and pick us up from the defense airfield, where we landed and take us to the famed, Saja-e Kalapani. We visited the jail in a whirlwind, but I personally couldn't appreciate it enough because of all the new paint and beautification which didn't allow us to feel the original fear of the place. Finally at 12 noon, we bid adieu to the heavenly Andamans and hopped for our 5 hour flight back home. A much desired trip finally done.

Fire of Vesuvius n Cool blues of Capri

So here goes my next blog entry...this trip was to napoli(naples) and I hadn't expected it to be this good but believe me this was my best trip till now...

To begin with, let me tell you the details of my journey...

bus from camerino to castel-raimondo(20 mins)

train from castel-raimondo to fabriano (35 mins)

train from fabriano to rome (3.5 hrs)

train from rome to naples (2 hrs)

After my last entry, I got a comment that during this trip no INCIDENT(ohhhh sorry ACCIDENT) happened to you. Ensure that during your next trip something interesting happens. True to the word, this trip started with one. I reached castel raimondo well in time to catch my train at 7.25 for fabriano only to discover that the train was 40 mins late...and the situation was so critical for me because that meant I will spent my night at fabriano( a very small place,but bigger than camerino), which was not safe.

So I was just kicking some chairs in the waiting room when there entered a girl .....seeing her I sat down quitely...it was her who asked me first,"what happened,something wrong?"...I told her my sad story and later found out that she also wanted to go to fabriano ...I was pretty relieved to have company at least till fabriano...she knew a little about INDIA and I was so immersed in the agony of being on the fabriano station for the night that it was quite late when I realized that she was speaking english....oh great...i had met an english speaking gal in italy...and later i found out she was also studying in Camerino only...after talking to her during the journey finally we exchanged phone numbers and she went to her home while I prepared to sleep on the station platform.

I reached Naples next morning and standing outside the railway station I could see garbage strewn around...some walls smelling of urine...beggars around.....ohh it seemed so much like paharganj of italy....I actually felt nostalgic there. When I called up the other guys of my group, they told me that we are going to Capri island ....i thought what a dumb idea.....being in naples and instead of going to Mt. Vesuvius,the inactive volcano which most of us have read of, these silly guys are going to some dumb island. I accepted their choice only to find out that it was one of the most beautiful places that I will ever see....an exotic place to be at....it seemed so untouched by humane degradation. The trip to Capri in itself was wonderful....a 1.5 hr trip on a cruise(pic 1)....This was the first time in my life that I went in the middle of the sea. I went to the tip of the cruise to experience the Titanic feel personally.

In capri, we took a ferry which showed us the whole island and we saw a lots of natural caves...limestone rocks with holes between them, people enjoying a swim in middle of nowhere....the feeling was just exceptional.

Mt Vesuvius from some distance

We went to azurra grotto, named so because its a cave where the water illuminates it to blue color. Even though the cave is dark but is brilliantly illuminated by the light coming through the entrance which is so small that u can enter or exit only during low tides. In case of a high tide, the entrance gets closed.....it was one of the place one can never forget all his life...just wonderful....

We also saw another cave somewhere up on the hills...and we decided to walk over to dat place only to find later that you can't walk to that place....you need to take a private boat to reach it via sea itself. As we'd already walked for more than a couple of kms so we decided to keep walking. Further ahead, we saw sea somewhere down there and decided to climb down the hill all the way to the sea. Later we realized it to be a risky mistake because of the steep slope and the other reason being that we also had two gals with us....and as it is u can never trust their talent. Out of six of us only two reached down with four quitting midway including me. As we managed to reach back up without anyone getting hurt, even this seemed like a brilliant adventure!!

We decided to sleep at the pebble beach tonight. Before sleeping we dived in the cold sea water at midnight , another first!!!

Next day we were to visit the city of POMPEII, which was covered by the volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. only to be discovered in 1746 , and when the whole city was excavated, dead bodies of people who were covered by the volcanic mud and dusts were discovered in heaps. There were kids sleepin with their mother, even was a dog who died while scrambling to get free of the leash he was tied with....

Crater of Vesuvius

Then we went to d see the crater of the volcano itself which was visible all this time from the distance. We found out that the whole of amalfi coast is volcanic n there is no idea where will be the exact crater of the next eruption but people over there say that it will be a huge eruption this time bcoz as its been a long time since the last eruption....

We ended our trip after seeing some actual napoli stuff near the railway station where a guy was hitting a gal as hard as he could have!!!! and nobody even cared to look at it...it seemed it was quite normal for everyone around. We obviously didn't dare to interfere.