Eagerly leaning off the boat,
we couldn’t believe how clear
the sea was; we could spot the
fi sh at 5-10 metres depth. Once
we had ol oaded our heavy
equipment into small boats
that ferried us to the island, we
met the two people who would
be critical to the future of our
dive school. Shaukat Ali was a
national-level wind surfer and
Mr. Kasali headed the SPORTS
recreational watersports
department. It was Ramzan at
the time, and everybody was
on fast. Shaukat managed to
convince his one-eyed friend,
Liaquat Ali (whom we called
Arjun) —legendary sailor,
fi sherman and adventurer—to
take us on our fi rst dive off the
Kavaratti wall.
I still remember every
single detail of that dive. The
visibility was over 35 metres;
the wall went down 400
metres off the continental
shelf and disappeared into
the inky blue abyss. At 20
metres was a cascading wall
of soft corals of all hues.
Huge turtles with wise eyes
shot off the crevasses on the
wall at the rate of three per
minute. There were hundreds
of jewel-like reef fi sh glinting
in the sunlight and gazing at
us curiously. They swarmed
around us, and in the distance,
slightly aloof but still curious
were huge napoleon wrasse.
Nearly 20 metres below us,
a couple of white-tip sharks
patrolled the reefs with an
eye each locked on us. I had
never before seen a shark
in the deep, and it was the
most exhilarating experience.
These elusive creatures have
not changed much in the last
million years and are the top
predators of the seas. That
first dive changed our lives.
It had such a lasting impact
on all of us that we realised
Lakshadweep was the place
to start our diving school.
Shaukat helped us hire two
Pablo fishing boats, about
10-metre-long with a really
noisy engine in the middle.
They were smelly, but rough
and ready, with no compass or
other navigational equipment.
On a wing and a prayer,
dependent totally on a foul-
tempered captain, we headed
off into the blue. We traversed
five islands in 12 days,
travelling at night, navigating
by the stars, and diving during
the day at a new site every day.
We called this the Kon-Tiki
Expedition, inspired by the
1947 journey of the same name
led by Norwegian explorer-
writer Thor Heyerdahl.
We also came up with
whimsical names for the divesites we discovered. So the first
one at Kavaratti became ‘The
Wall of Wonders;’ at Kadmat
Island, where we stayed for
two days, there came to be
‘Sting Ray City,’ ‘Garden
of Eden,’ ‘East of Eden,’
‘Classroom,’ ‘Double Reef,’ and
‘North Cave,’ where a large
stingray slept in the depths of
a gloomy cave full of mollusc
and fish swimming upside
down. Off the east side, we
found ‘Lenny’s Cave,’ named
after a huge spotted leopard
moray eel who befriended
us. A couple of years later,
Shaukat (after being trained
by us as a diver) discovered
a ledge at 36 metres at the
southern tip of the island. It
was full of resting sharks—
white tips, black tips, grey reef
sharks, and nurse sharks. We
named it ‘Shark-At Alley’ after
him. Another dive site with
a colony of moray eels waspromptly declared ‘The Moray
Eel Cooperative Society’.
Those 12 days of our
expedition were the most
magical days of my life, high
on adventure, adrenalin, and
amazing blue seas teeming
with underwater life. The
fishing boats we used had no
shade, and by the end of the
trip, we were all burnt a crisp
walnut-brown and took to
native clothing for whatever
protection we could get. Back
at the Bangaram Island Resort
(bangaramislandresort.com),
our friends failed to recognise
us and mistook us for locals.
It took us four years of solid
lobbying to get the requisite
permission to start the dive
school, Lacadives, at Kadmat
Island, but it finally happened
in 1995. And we did, in a
way, become local islanders,
bringing up three sons on that
magical archipelago.PEOPLE & PLACES
The lionfi sh has
more than 13
venomous spines for
defence; the
wingspan of
a manta ray can
reach upto 20 feet.The napoleonfi sh can be
spotted near the deeper
coral reefs of Lakshadweep.CLOCKWISE: COURTESY OF PRAHLAD KAKAR (2); ULTRAMARINFOTO/GETTYIMAGEStravelandleisureindia.in