The first time i heard about this place was a year ago, stating that it had one of the coolest beaches and was one of the best dive sites in India. So when i heard that the folks from Planet Scuba awere organizing a dive trip to Murudeshwar I was eager to go for I had wanted to visit this place since I first heard about it.

So we  ( Saj, the instructor and I, his wife) headed toward the office of Planet Scuba by 5PM. There we saw all of the crew busy with packing, filling  forms which contained emergency contact nos and other details of the team headed toward Murudeshwar. After duly filling out our forms each, we handed it to Rashmi and went along with the others to board our mini van.

There were 8 students- Siddharth, Manoj, Prithvi, Nischith, Ravi, Sreenivas, Nanda & Rithesh with two instructors- Saj and Madhu & a fun diver Kamal. We left the place at about 5:45 and started our journey and stopped at about 9 for  dinner in the outskirts of Bangalore. After that, it was time for everyone to sleep.

We reached Murudeshwar at 7am the next day-thats where the adventures started!!! As soon as we reached there, the driver parked our mini van right onto the beach where its wheels got stuck in the sand. It took a lot of team effort and dried coconut leaves and sticks to finally haul it out of the sand. That took almost half an hour. All of us then rushed into our hotel. It was called the RNS Residency and one of the best in Murudeshwar.

But the best thing in Murudeshwar apart from diving is the Shiva statue & some other similar ones which can be seen from very far away that contain the puranic stories of Raavana acquiring the Shiva linga. We could get a clear view of it from our hotel room too. After freshening up the guys all headed toward the beach for their dive sessions while i decided to stay back. Some of them took more time than required, to get ready. Also they had to go to the local Police station to acquire permission for diving, for security reasons due to terrorism& other security reasons. Anyway they finally took off toward the sea only after 11.

The boat ride toward the dive spot was a little more than one hour from the shore. The instructors, Madhu and Saj each took four students under their supervision and off they went underwater for the first day of two open water dives. They enjoyed a lot and spent 3 days boasting about the fishes that they saw. The lobster that was over a metre long, the giant giant grouper which had a face the size of a football, the moray eel that kept poking its head out of the rocks, and the trigger fish, the fusiliers and the snappers that always kept them company.

The course was completed in two days time. But the best part of their dives was on the third day when they went out for their fun dives.. Also by the third day all of us were better acquainted and began to really enjoy the trip.They had planned before itself to take a can &  bottle of Pepsi, some eggs in order to check some things they had seen in some dive videos. So after diving in they opened the Pepsi and as seen in the video some pressure kept the Pepsi from coming out of the bottle. They in turn took out a straw and had a sip each from the bottle which delighted everyone especially the youngest member of our dive group, Rithesh. They also wanted to break the egg under water which would keep the white and yellow of the egg seperate due to pressure. But the egg which was tied to the BCD of one of the students’s turned loose and went underwater before anyone realised it.

After that we quickly packed again and was on our Mini van back to Bangalore.On the way back after watching a movie in the bus we had a long dinner. We took off from there only after 10. We finally reached back at 9 am on Monday morning thus ending a very joyous and memorable underwater experience.

Submitted by Preethy Warrier