BeyondTheMargins

Here we go !,

I have this strange penchant in me, a penchant that likes adventure and exploration. Ever since the province positioned me in Churchill the polar bear capital of the world, i developed an addiction. An addiction that doesn’t like comfort, seeks adrenaline in -30 degrees, seeks physical activity and energy, be it winter sports, water sports, running, or exploration of remote locations that not many people have been to. No wonder immigration suits me. I like the idea of people overstepping boundaries, leaving their comfort zones, stepping into lands unknown and integrating with the unknown, saying yes to new things with eyes full of curiosity and intrigue. Sometimes in life you know you like adventure, but you just don’t know how dominant that part of you is until you go all out exploring and then you discover that you would rather have worked for Nat Geo and done just fine …

The Island is a highly protected UNESCO biosphere reserve off the coast of the country (location and name undisclosed), so we’ll just call it ‘the island’. It is known for its coral reef reserves and sea life and remains cut off from the rest of the world, residing in the southern hemisphere of the world. It’s a perfect and coveted spot for scuba diving, snorkeling, shark exploration, and the exploration of rare sea life. It resides about 40 nautical miles from the mainland, and just one speedboat at 8 am every morning makes its way to the island. Oftentimes, if you miss the speedboat due to the weather, you are likely not to find any other conveyance to the island. The availability of the speedboat each morning is highly dependent on the sea weather conditions, and the dock is littered with locals. Sometimes, if storms make their way to the island, you can forget about the speedboat for a good duration of time.

On your way to the island from the mainland, the appearance of the island is often prehistoric and eerily untouched, as if taking you back to the age of Jurassic Park. One would have the perception that one is entering uncharted, untouched, and unfiddled natural territory with minimal human interference, if at all, for ages. “This is protected land,” as the dock guard would say as he scanned your luggage onto the speedboat for even one single bag of polythene or chemicals that could pollute sea life. The speedboat accommodates just about 30 people at a time, mostly locals.

Once on the island, you wake up to this each morning.

The Island, a mountainous archipelago off the mainland, had ‘two sides to the story,’ as they would say. It felt like being on the hills in India, with every road steeping upwards and winding around, but on an island and with the most crystal clear water around you.

If you were fond of hiking, you could trudge your way across the island on a good 20-25 km hike, and I mean a 25 km “hike,” not a regular walk.

If one wanted to witness the sunrise each morning (which we never did see in our time there because we faced west of the island), one had to trudge the opposite side of the island early in the morning or on a scooty as early as 5:30 am to witness the sunrise. The mountainous side of the island had no beaches and had a sharp fall into the abyss and blazing sea, with the most spectacular views and a gorgeous lighthouse.

This side of the island had a side to it during storms and the road to the part of the island is an ever winding road

Safe to say, at the time that we were on the island, it was inhabited by the local people—a handful of just about 200 individuals who were local fishermen and just about only 5 foreigners, excluding us. It meant that we basically had an entire island to ourselves, with beach after beach, untouched, crystal clear, and left to our personal devices for snorkeling, scuba diving, and sunbathing. Our time on the island meant walking up to the one local bar each evening to witness the sunset, chat with the locals over a beer, and also meet the remaining foreigners who searched for ‘others like themselves’. On the platoon were a Russian Moldovan geologist with his photographer wife and an East German couple. Evenings consisted of long joint walks across the island with torchlight headgear on us and a ‘puppy rescue’ mission where a litter of puppies on the west side of the island was rescued by the ‘foreigner team’.

The food on the island consisted of daily changing menus of freshly caught sea fish, and I witnessed a freshly caught shark for the first time in my life. For those wondering— i did not have it!

And I am pretty sure nobody on the island ever suffered from cholesterol, heart disease, stress, or obesity considering the lack of stress in daily life, the remoteness, the beauty of the location, and seafood availability.

Needless to say, the sunset, the water, and the beauty of the place, along with the evening beer, gave us life.

And sometimes mingling with the locals

we stayed at an accommodation owned by a local family on the island beach facing.

Our schedule for leaving the island was 15 days later; however, a storm struck the island, and the speedboat taking us out of the island remained out of sight, extending our stay by 7 days more. In the last few days of our stay, we gathered on the dock every day to see if the “boats would return,” as they would say, only to be told, “no boats today.”

The sea during the storm is something like this, a rare beauty that held us at its limitations.

By day 22, the island had now become a sort of family. The foreigner team had infiltrated each other’s Instagram’s and each other’s Facebook accounts and kept tabs on each other throughout the island. We were isolated from the world, and we had only each other, and in some way it was a beautiful existence that took us back in time. We bonded without fear and limitation and the slow pace of life settled into our nervous systems. The ever unnatural need “to do” was gone. The need to “just live” settled. Our islander team, who saw us every day and had beer with us every evening, were on our Instagram feeds all day. We were all buddy buddies. The hospitality of the islanders, needless to say, and their protectiveness towards us was something to mention. We were looked after like children.

On the last day, we were shipped out on a different boat to avoid delays, bypassing authorities on a local boat. The boat ride this time was a longer 2 and a half hour ride to the mainland, sneaking its way in. Our foreigner team was altogether, and suddenly the island was bereft of every foreign identity. The sun shone brightly in the middle of the sea, and for the first time in my life, I experienced a foreboding I had never felt before. The sight of endless water around me in every direction, blazing under the sun, was striking. There was something about this that people said, if you are not used to it, do not look around you 360 degrees, especially if all you see is the sea and the sea and just the sea. Midway, we were asked to move into the boat dungeon downstairs via a small set of stairs, and all 7 of us made our way downstairs and sat quietly. In between, we took pictures of each other and uploaded reels onto our Instagrams, in case people knew exactly where we were and kept quiet. Three hours into the journey, we were plopped out onto another dockyard and finally onto the mainland.

Needless to say, this was life-changing, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, this was what not many people ever actually get to do, and we came in as just individuals and left as unforgettable friends! Cheers!