Feel like a fish...

We stayed 3 days in Dive India, Havelock, Andaman. We went for scuba diving on 23rd Dec, 2009. Couple of us know swimming. Rest of us know the basics of swimming. We had breakfast around 7:00AM, Picked the dive jacket and fins according to our size, travelled in dongi about 40minutes to reach the dive spot. On the way, in the dongi, dive instructor explained about the procedures, signals, dos and don'ts etc. Reached the spot, fitted our cylinders, etc and were ready for the dive :) . Dive instructor, David, gave instructions, and asked us to practice it in the shallow water. We practiced to breathe from the cylinder, to clean the goggles, to clean the mouth piece, etc. for 5 minutes. Once we were ready, David asked us to touch the ground with finger, keeping our body flat, move like crawling only with fingers and flipping the fins. He took care of inflating and deflating the air in the jacket to maintain the buoyancy. Actually, there are lot of calculations behind it. You need to know all those if you want to go deeper, say 20meters depth, and above. There are dive certification courses to know about those in detail. We reached 5 to 7 meters depth only.
Raffi, Sunil, and Elango went in one batch and Maruthu, and Sampath went in other batch. David asked us to clear the air pressure on the ear regularly by swallowing saliva. Coral reef area started just few meters ahead in the water. Saw lot of beautifull corals, colurfull fishes, Blue fish, Yellow and Black fish (Clown Fish), Green fish, Sea urchins, rose colored star fish, groups of fishes, etc. David asked us told the boulder corals if we need any support and asked us not to touch any other corals or any other creatures over there. It was a nice experience seeing the marine life under water. Didn't feel any difficulties. One of the mates had a calf muscle catch, but within manageable limits. We were under the sea for 30 minutes, felt like a fish, and enjoyed the marine life.

White Water Rafting (WWR)

Aug 1st 2009
We all gathered at the bangalore city railway station on friday night.
Most of us finished dinner already, Few of us went for another round, ate some sandwiches in Comesum restaurant.Got into the train Shimoga Express (6227), chit chatted a while, went to the berth after the ticket verification. Elango woke up as per the train schedule and asked everyone to get ready as the train was supposed to reach Shimoga in 10 more minutes. I woke up, went to toilet, refreshed, then found out that the train was late by 1 hour. Few continued the sleep, few enjoyed the early morning breeze as the train crossed Bhatravati and other places. Soumya hit nostalgia, remembered about her school days. We reached shimoga, elango lost the TRAX driver number, called Adreno Dilip, got driver number again, found the TRAX, loaded our lugguage into it. One new friend, nagesh, joined us in the TRAX. His friends already reached agumbe one day ahead and waiting for him. We introduced ourself to nagesh and started playing coffee potting. As it was 7:30AM, We had idli vada, coffee in a restaurant in shimoga. Got back to TRAX, continued coffee potting and came up with cool limericks. We stopped by MandaGadde Bird santuary, passed by Agumbe, finally reached Hebri, the water rafting base camp at 11:30AM. We occupied the dormitory, refreshed us, few slept for an hour, lunch was ready by 1:15AM. Dilip ask us to eat enough food as the water rafting requires lot of energy. We all ate well :) and rafts came back after the morning ride.They pumped the air into the rafts, we picked our life jackets and helmets. Guide explained the basic commands to us. We boarded the rafts and got into water. for few minutes we practiced the commands and started our journey. I took my handy cannon camera, packed inside the dry bag provided by the guide. As we proceeded we used to the commands and got the synchronization among the rafters. Guide informed us about the places where we can get into water to swim across the river. We got into water for few minutes. I don't know the swimming, but It was too tempting. I jumped into water at three places keeping all my faith on the life jacket. It was an awesome experience.
The guide didn't allow me to take pictures at all for the first half of the journey. We took a small break, few more people joined us for the rest of the journey. For the second half, I changed the raft, the guide in the new raft was cool, he didn't say anything about the camera usage, I took my camera wherever it was possible, clicked some snaps, shooted some videos. Few fell off while crossing couple of rapids, everyone jumped into water as soon as the guide gave the signal for the swimming. Elango got hurt on a rock in a rapid while swimming :(, I and Poorvi was about to drifted away by the water into a wrong path when we were out in the water. We both didn't know swimming. Somehome managed to stay against the water flow, and got into the raft with the help of the pedal. It rained as we crossed dense forest areas. After 3 hours of enjoyment, the 26 kms of water rafting was over.




We came out, lifted the rafts on our head for half kilometer, kept it on the vehicle. I and hecate competed for the max push-ups on the ground. You know who would have lasted long, yes, ofcourse it was me :), although hecate gave a tough competition. Maruthu captured that in the camera. We walked back a km on the roads, another vehicle came for pickup. we reached the base camp, ate hot hot Aloo Bajji, few Capsicum Bajji, lots of Onion Bajji. refreshed ourself, had dinner, few went to sleep. We played cards, Luck was with me again, I won 3 or the 4 games we played. went to sleep on saturday. Sunday's activities worth a separate blog entry, will post it later.