Oh yes, the honeymoon trip. Komandoo was a beautiful, beautiful place with the best diving sites I’ve seen so far, good food and friendly people. In other words, it was almost the total opposite of India – or was it?

As the whole island is built around tourism, it felt… artificial. Like a facade. Not only the 100% imported food and sterile environment (the staff cleans fallen leaves from the pathways in the morning), but also the staff itself. Although everyone kept up a friendly face and asked if there was something they could do for us, I could still sense a big difference between them and, say, their Filipino counterparts on Malapascua. If you ask me, it’s all about what motivates people.

You see, when I’m dealing with Filipinos, I get the feeling that they genuinely want to help me out when something is wrong, whereas Indians are only willing to do something if they get money out of it. Sad to say, but for me the Maldivians were closer to Indians than I expected. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly hostile, but there were constant signals from the staff that they are only in it for the money. I guess I’m even more sensitive to that kind of thing after being exposed to its extreme forms here in India.

Or maybe Filipinos have better acting skills, who knows.

Anyway, the trip itself. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking, so here we go:

The villas were built over water and there was a constant selection of fishes swimming around them. The house reef of the island stretched all the way around the construction and you could spot dozens of species just by sitting on the porch.

On a lucky day you could spot a small (around half a metre wide) stingrays near the beach. This one was no more than three meters from the shoreline, digging for food in the sand.

As Maldives is very close to the equator, sunsets were spectacularly quick. From the position above it took less than ten minutes until the whole star was behind horizon. The main thing for us was of course diving, and boy did we see everything imaginable:

I’ve never seen corals like this before, but that’s not all. How about this:

Or this:

And how would you feel about having one of these on your plate?

What’s more, we found some turtles on our explorations:

This was only a small sample of what we saw, the rest can be found behind the small thumbnails and this link.

Tags: diving, holiday, it's good to be me, luxuries, maldives, money, natural beauty, photos, service, travel, ways of working, what is different

Today and yesterday the people around us have been celebrating Ayudha Puja.  For us, it looked like this:

People decorate their cars and tools, smear them with sandal wood paste and rejoice.

Also, there were lots upon lots of firecrackers going off on the main street, which alerted us (hanging out in the hammocks) to check out the convoy passing our home street a block away. So out we went to see what was going on and saw these trucks:

There were people shouting slogans on the trucks, and apparently they were happy to see us there  judging by the hollering, waving of hands and smiling faces.   There was one guy who looked like he’s in charge, at least he was ushering the dancers and drummers on if they tried to stay to impress the gawking foreigners as you can see from this video. And here’s the guy with my sweetie:

In other news, we seem to have a resident falcon, who tends to perch on the palm trees on our home street. Its screech is beginning to sound familiar, as it’s telling off the rooks trying to get its food. (I’m not sure if it’s the same falcon all the time, they all look alike and there are lots of them, but I like to think it’s the same individual.) I will do my best to get some footage of the big bird.

Tags: culture, holiday, natural beauty, people in india, religion

Things happen too fast for me to comment on here. I’m being bombarded with various sensory stimuli all the time, and something has to be forgotten in order for new ones to be inserted. Here goes, then.

The air smells a bit acrid in the city, since there are so many engines running at all times. The noise is overwhelming, there is absolutely never a time that would be silent. If the horns of the cars, rickshaws and bikes are not hooting, the squirrels or birds are making some din.

Riding on the back of a motorbike in the traffic can be fearsome. Please keep all limbs close to the torso at all times. Beware of bumps and potholes in the road. Even if the traffic is supposed to be on the left, it’s not always so. Be prepared that you will be stared (what, two white people on an Enfield??) and made faces at. I was very happy to have a helmet with a reflecting visor today – I was alternately making faces and smiling to the flabbergasted people.

On Nandi Hills I was having a bit of vertigo. It’s not that high up, but the walls are steep in places. It was also beautiful, and in parts it seemed to be stolen from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Gum trees, ancient gnarly trees and acacias everywhere. Again we were a part of the sights to be seen for the locals – enough to have our pictures taken from buses and cars going past.

The transit back from the hills to the city is a big one for the senses. In the countryside the air is clean, there are orchards and vineyards in between villages which are less than well-kept or well-organised. Cows and water buffaloes are plentiful, hen and roosters in all colours imaginable and stray dogs, packs of them. Kilometre by kilometre the neon lights and billboards start to appear more and more, and less of the orchard/vineyard/field plots until none are there. One does feel more free on the countryside, that is very much true. Not so many staring faces, no more walls around the roads, and no kingfishers sitting on electric wires.

And yet again we were back home. It is really starting to feel like home, more and more. There is still the syndrome of putting stuff down and forgetting which floor I put the said object down on, but I’m getting better on the efficiency side.

The nights are warm and my love is here with me. I have a home away from home.

Tags: food, happiness, motorbikes, natural beauty, road trip, traffic

As I previously wrote, my holiday in Malapascua could have been even more of a success. The cold I caught on the way there got worse on my way back, thanks to the overenthusiastic air conditioning of Dragonair planes – the reason I got ill in the first place. Next time won’t be operated by Dragonair, thank you very much.

It’s really hard to find positive things to say, so I’ll let the photos speak for me. This was my first time with a waterproof casing on my Ixus 80, but I still managed to catch some nice ones:

Yes, it is exactly as much of a paradise island as it looks like.

This photo is taken from the Tapilon wreck, a cargo ship that was sunk by a torpedo during World War II.The wreck is badly damaged and in several pieces, but some of the cargo and even a couple of arm bones are still recognisable in the bottom.

Lionfish are abundant in Malapascua, but still a bit difficult to spot from time to time. Better be careful since they are poisonous.

Malapascua is known to have a lot of nudibranchs of different colors.

Starfish are also plentiful, but these red ones are a little less common. I remember seeing maybe two or three among the dozens I spotted in total.

Boxer shrimps are a pain to photograph because they are small but with a lot of long extending parts. It took me tens of  photos to get a decent one among them.

White tip sharks are one of the best attractions in Malapascua: fascinating, relatively easy to find and sleeping in the daytime. I wonder if they ever wake up when people flash lights at them?

The last full day started with a thresher shark dive at five o’clock in the morning. Unfortunately the sharks weren’t informed and only one dared to show up in the distance.

And just for the record, being here alone, homeless and ill creates a huge vacuum around gluteal muscle area. I miss my wife like hell.

Edit: this is just a small sample of the pics. A larger sample can be found here and I hope to upload even more (but not so good) photos in the near future.

Tags: flu, holiday, natural beauty, oh bugger, photos, travel

Malapascua was just fantastic, but unfortunately my health wasn’t. During the first flight I caught a cold of some sort and spent the rest of the trip more or less moving by ibuprofen ja adrenaline. I couldn’t just let the opportunity pass and skip the diving while there, so I chose medical CPR instead and did 17 dives during the past seven days.

I’m writing this in one of the pay lounges of Hong Kong international airport since our trip arrangements are a bit less than efficient: the flight from Philippines landed at 15:10, while the connecting flight leaves around 22:20 – more than seven hours later. Not having to spend all that time on the benches near gates was well worth that 500 Hong Kong dollars (around 40 euros). Nice armchairs, electricity outlets, free internet access, drinks, food, showers and massages should make the wait much less painful.

I’ll post some photos later, but here’s a teaser:

I think it’s a sweetlips, but I may be completely wrong. Please let me know if you can identify the species

Edit: my second guess would be striped dogface pufferfish, but still not sure. I’m not exactly brilliant in biology, so help me out.

Tags: diving, flu, holiday, let me know, natural beauty, oh bugger, photos, travel, waiting

I promised more photos from Goa, so here goes. First I want to introduce the command vessel I spent several mornings on:

The ride was sometimes a bit bumpy, but luckily the guys from Barracuda always carried seasickness medication with them. The sense of balance is one of those things that don’t change over time very much, so I should get some of those for myself too.

Apart from diving I did some exploring around north Goa by bike. One of these was the Aguada fort near the jetty:

The sun was just about to set when I reached the fort, sothe views were quite spectacular. The camera does not bring justice to wide angle scenes, so here’s a little something from the fort:

I wonder what this building was when it (presumably) had a roof?

I’m running out of interesting photos here, so I’ll conclude with a scenery from the bay below:

You can find a cropped 1920×1080 image of the last photo here.

Tags: diving, holiday, natural beauty, photos, transportation, travel

I finally managed to get all the photos from my trip uploaded to the gallery. There are some I want to show here, the rest can be found from my gallery.

I spent my Xmas Eve in the hotel poolside, enjoying a complimentary dinner and cheap entertainment before going to sleep early. The place looked actually quite nice in all its glory:

Of course, being in a tourist joint, I immediately made some new “friends” to pose and take pictures for me:

For a few photos they wanted a donation to one of their temples, showing that “all the others” had given a thousand rupees or more. Being a selfish capitalist, I opted to donate a mere 300 without feeling sorry for it. I like to decide how much money I give and who it goes to, but sometimes we have to make concessions.

Further down my explorations I found I nice cliff at the end of a road, north from Calangute beach:

The altitude of the place doesn’t show at all, but the view was really spectacular. Sandy beaches were located on both sides of the cliff and the whole area was really quiet in the morning time.

Next I took a couple of extra turns before reaching Charpora fort on top of the next cliff. Not much to see there, but the view was again worth the climb:

The previous cliff is just behind my left shoulder here. The photo was taken by a drink salesman whose prices were 400% over MRP, the maximum retail price defined by the Indian Government. He still had a business case there since the climb is quite steep and heavy, and at least I had to go for refreshing drinks after that.

Seems like I am still missing some of the photos, so I conclude this post with this photo from our diving site:

This is the east end of Grande Island, a popular SCUBA diving place among people visiting Goa. I have done all of my nine dives around this island, but hope to expand my horizons beyond that.

I’ll try to find the missing photos tonight and post some highlights from them as soon as possible. Stay tuned.

Tags: diving, holiday, hotels, natural beauty, people in india, photos, travel

Today I completed my first two official open water dives in the Indian Ocean. It was definitely worth doing although we had a lot of small trouble on the way. The worst part for me was that my mask didn’t fit really well and it applied constant pressure on my forehead, eventually giving me a headache from hell. The instructors promised to try and find another one, which will hopefully be more suitable for the shape of my face. I also had a mild nausea after getting back to the boat, probably because of the headache, all the whirling around and possibly also the sun. Tomorrow will tell me more about how my body reacts to diving.

Apart from the trouble, all that stuff down there was really worth seeing: a lot of colourful fish, sea cucumbers, shellfish and finally a WW II era shipwreck site on the coast of Grande Island. The ship had been caught in a storm, hit some rocks and been cut in half from the middle. The front half was carried towards the shore by the waves and gradually washed back to the sea afterwards. A lot of fish colonies seemed to be living inside the wreck and parts of the hull were all around the area. My favourite part was to examine the insides through the holes in the sides, and of course seeing a part of the ship’s transmission (or something similar) with all the gears still in place. Wrecks are definitely one of the things I like SCUBA for.

It has been an unbelievably exhausting day and I’m thinking of hitting the hay already before nine. Spending the rest of the vacation like this would eliminate much of Goa’s downsides for me. The tranquil of the sea, the good company onboard the diving boat, good night sleep and a bonus feature of having effective exercise every day – what’s there not to like?

Tags: diving, holiday, natural beauty, practical stuff