Emperors Mid Sea Dive @ Kovalam, 21.1.12

Post Trek Write-Up from Arun Venugopal:

Finally managed to accomplish yet another of my suicidal (ok thats exaggerated) to-do activity, to dive into the Bay of Bengal (with a life jacket). Some genius in CTC had this amazing idea to organise mid sea dives in the Kovalam beach. My colleague Murali and I jumped on to the e-mail and enlisted for this rock crazy expedition. After an uneventful ride from my home till CEG , from where Murali hitched me a ride till Thiruvanmiyur in his dynamically unbalanced Pulsar ( Bajaj engineers need to do something about the vibration I cans still feel the tremor, pity Murali for driving it to work daily) There we met up with the other CTC folks who had enlisted for the dive. There Prabhakar offered us a lift til Kovalam . we dumped Murali's bike at the Thiruvanmiyur MRTS vehicle park and went on in Prabhakar's car. 

Ill never forget the drive to Kovalam for 2 reasons. First is 2 rock crazy girls , who were a part of CTC, were riding in their Activa to Kovalam. I guess they should be thankful to have reached Kovalam in one piece. They should have collided with our car at least twice (I dunno how many such near misses they had on their way). The other was a couple of drunken dudes stopping by to make money when the group Had gathered for a head count near Kovalam. Those two fellows were talking in some highly accented english and behaved like a bunch of thugs. We folks had such a laugh after they left. Poor chaps had made fools of themselves.

We finally reached Kovalam and after parking our cars in a graveyard the group ventured towards the sea. We were provided life jackets and we boarded the fishing dinghies and made towards the sea. We expected the fishermen to take us at least a km into the sea and were quitedisappointed when he stopped about 500 m from the shore. Nevertheless it dint dampen our spirits. We dived into the sea.

The time in the sea made the effort truly worth it. I felt like being in an abyss of water. The water was just throwing us around and people were drifting apart. It was initially very scary. Once i realised that the fishermen were around having an eye about for us it put all my doubts and fears to rest. I simply lay around the water enjoying the view of the horizon and the sky. It was an amazing experience. With people cracking random jokes and pulling everyone's legs (literally) it was on the whole fun.

After about 45 min the water got really bouncy. The fishermen told us that the tide was on the rise and that we must get out. We all boarded (with a good amount of difficulty) and the fishermen allowed us to jump back into the water about a few metres of the shore. We all drifted happily to the beach.

I saw a really funny thing here. I drifted to the beach and removed the life jacket. I was just watching the sea when a lady came drifting to the beach. She was unable to get up and she just kept going back and forth with the waves. It was a bit humorous for me to watch , i guess the lady would have been petrified. I pulled her out of the water the next time she drifted towards the shore. Only to be asked if I was a northie (my tamil core writhed with a sense of righteous self indignation :P ) and the next question was if I was a tambrahm (as if it was written on my face!!) Had my Don Quixote moment :P

After a nice little photo session we were on our way back home. On the way back when Prabhakar was feeling a bit sleepy it was suggested that he should smoke. Then a question raised as to who else smokes and even before I could make my reply the rest of the group declared "nee lam dhumadika maata un munjileye ezhidiruku" with such a startling unity!! man I need to go for a plastic surgery to make it less obvious to people.

On the whole an awesome trip with loads of fun.

With Regards
C.Premkumar