I’ve just returned from a long eventful voyage to one end of the world* – a trip that kept me at sea for 63 days, got me some new friends and gave me the chance to experience a lot of things for the first time.

It feels like a criminal waste not to write about it. And if I did write about it, it would be worse, because I can’t write about all of it. After much deliberation, i have decided to get a typing.

I’ll be writing about the voyage in several posts – highlighting the best and worst experiences. To make things interesting, each post will focus of one of the human senses – i’ll try and describe how each sense was stimulated. So, watch this page.

* I was part of the Third Indian Expedition to the Southern (Antarctic) Ocean which sailed from Mauritius to the Antarctic Continental Shelf and then back to India between February & April, 2009.

If you’ve spent 10 minutes with me, you know i’m clumsy. After being embarassed about it all my life, i have finally made peace with my clumsiness. You see, i’ve found out that i’m only clumsy on land! Put me on a ship in the arabian sea, during the southwest monsoon, and apparently, i can stay up and about without feeling sick or throwing up or tripping and falling or dropping things or spilling coffee.

Yep, i’m back from my 3 day cruise which was cut short to 2, due to various reasons. Mostly, it was amazing. Here are some of the amazing things

- How rough the sea was…. to pitch and roll like that, no one can tell you how it feels..

- I did not get seasick!! I ate well, slept well and was up and about the whole time. :) Hope i don’t get sick in the future.

- The dolphins (self explanatory)

- Biolumenesence* takes your breath away. Some 20 miles off kochi, we encountered an algal bloom. Although it was night (2100 hrs), it was hard to miss the bloom, seeing as it was emitting an electric blue light of its own. The bloom was patchy – brilliant in places but dull in others…. but as it was, it took us more than 2 hours to get past it. In other words, freakin’ huge! Standin on the deck watchin the billiant blue ripples under a star lit sky, this is what i was humming:

The more you see the less you know
The less you find out as you go
I knew much more then than I do now

Neon heart day-glow eyes
A city lit by fireflies
They’re advertising in the skies
For people like us

- from City of blinding lights by U2

* The phenomenon of emission of light by living organisms.