Fables of a fish tank

It was my mom who brought this topic up, when she was home last year. She was telling J, Vincy was crazy about fishes even when she was a child. And look at her, she is continuing it well into her adult life. And that took me to a trip down the memory lane, to my childhood days.

In Chalakudi, Kerala, at my grand parents’ house, I used to go fishing in a little canal with my brother during my summer holidays. When I say fishing, don’t imagine the sophisticated fishing rods and hooks. It was always me, being the oldest who would sneak our fishing essential of those days. A Thorthu mundu. Typical white cotton bath towel used in Kerala, which would be drying up in the clothes line. 

A few hundred meters away from our home, crossing a few paddy fields, we would reach the snaking canal. Wading through the chill waters, which was little above our tiny knees, that would wobble in the mild flow, we would catch those shiny swift fishes by dipping the thorthu mundu, waiting for unassuming fishes to swim in. When they do, we hold up the thorthu mundu above the water and we have our catch. And its not as simple as it sounds as the tiny creatures are difficult to catch as they are pretty swift. I remember squealing in delight holding them between my fingers, the sliminess and the wriggle giving a happiness, nothing in the world parallels to.

The fishes are then transferred into cones made of Colacasia leaves. Making sure the water does not leak and fishes do not jump out until we reach home, was an arduous task, until we put them into a bottle. I made a trip to the canal almost everyday and most days I just love watching the fishes and wading through the waters. On the days we didn’t have our thorthu mundu, we simply scooped our hands together to catch fishes, play with them for some time and let them go.

Elders in the family were not happy, but they couldn’t stop me from going and I always wheedle my younger cousins or my brother to accompany me to the canal. To a point, even when I grew older, if I am not seen around at home, the others knew where to look for me.

After marriage, I remember taking J and showing all the happy places of my childhood, crossing those paddy fields, which had a lot construction by then, and to the canal, much to the amusement of my grandparents.

Strangely, I hadn’t in all these years connected my childhood craziness to the fish tank that I am maintaining now. Moms, I tell you, they connect the dots precisely.

After we moved into the house we are in, Dennu insisted on having a pet. With both J and I working, and also travelling being part of our work, having a pet was not a practical idea. Having grown up with a dog, I know a pet almost equals having yet another child at home. I came with the idea of having fishes as pets, and isn’t it a bright one at it?

A good scrub and a fresh coat of paint

Lot of thought has gone into how we would sustain one, amidst our busy schedules, our holiday trips and trips to Kerala. That’s how I chose an open to air fish tank in the little space we had. Made of cement in the shape of a flower, it can hold almost 50 litres of water and quite a number of fish. Though many think crows and cats may catch the fishes, they don’t. The fishes would swiftly swim into the depths of water and save themselves. 

Maintenance of this fish tank is not easy though. Since it is open to sunlight green moss grows and covers in the insides of the tank, which I scrub out so I can watch the fishes clearly. This is a ritual I follow almost every week, except when I travel. The gentlemen at home cannot be trusted to feed my little ones regularly and they may have end up starving. Based on my travel plans I would allow the moss to grow on a couple of weekends, and if the two gentlemen forget the feeding, the fishes still can eat something and survive.

A bit of recycling happens with the water too as I have mentioned in an earlier post. The residual water of the purifier gets into the fish tank and the nutrient rich murky water from the fish tank is used to water my plant babies. Environment friendliness. A big tick.

After my surgery, the moment I start palpitating, ( which was one of the side effects) I would come down to the fish tank and watch my little fellas swim around and it used to calm my anxiously beating heart. They turned out to be my therapy.

Right now, I have guppies, white and black mollies and few angel fishes, a total of around 50 of them in the fish tank. I still love holding them and squeal quietly when they wriggle in my hands. I don’t think I would ever grow out of my love and fascination for fishes.

Here are few pictures of my fish tank, with a fresh coat of paint by none other than Dennu during the lock down period.

Notice the gang of guppies?

The Fish tank that keeps me going - almost 15 years old

Hand made Memorabilia

I thought I was done with Maldives. But no and promise to keep this short & sweet.

My lovely readers who have not gone through my accounts of Maldives can read it up  here, here and here

One of the frequent fun things we did at Maldives was snorkeling.    While I snorkeled in the shallow waters, J would swim up to the permitted depths of the sea from various points of the Island resort we were staying.   I usually returned back after few minutes to the shore and was hooked to reading, while watching out  for J.  I would see him as a tiny speck moving in the vast blue tapestry laid out by nature.

On the second day when he came back from his snorkeling trip, he brought me some shells that he picked up while snorkeling, which was cute and I started collecting them.  One of the trips, he came back with a little bottle, which looked like a small Jam bottle. I kept it all together everyday, including the stuff he would fancy and pick up from the strolls on the beach.

And here is what he and I together picked up from the seas and beaches of Maldives. 

The haul, forgot to put my fistful of sand
I carried

After we came back, they all were cleaned and with some artistic additions added, voila, here we go with a memorabilia, which now has a prime place in our crockery cupboard.

Hand made in a day

with the stuff at home,
please pardon my shabby painting 

Gardening Chronicles

Now that I have made my plant mom confessions, it’s time to show you all my garden. 

Calling my space, a garden is definitely an exaggeration without an iota of doubt. The word garden conjures up images of endless green stretches, flower patches filling the air with their fragrances and riot of greenery and color. Mine is none of that, its just a collection of few pots from all over the place, with some plants that I have been nurturing. You can imagine the restraints of space a house in metro can throw up. Yet, this is a piece of earth, that I love going to when my soul needs calming down.

When we moved to the current house in the year 2006, it was my mom who had sent me a dozen colorful potted plants – a Santro full of foliage that we brought home. Some of the pots that I have are from that batch. I regularly paint them so they look good even today. 

An interesting tit-bit about the plant care – The residual water from the water purifier is collected and introduced into the fish tank that is part of the garden. Before doing this, the murky water from the open to air fish tank is used for watering the plants. Apparently, this dirty water is rich in beneficial bacteria, as well as potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen and trace nutrients that will promote lush, healthy plants. These are some of the same nutrients you'll find in many commercial fertilizers. One of the few things that can annoy J is wasting water. Irksome to do in the mornings, but our bit in saving the environment and water. 

NCBI, National Centre for Biotechnology Information, USA, had published papers on evidence that gardening provides substantial human health benefits especially in treating depression, anxiety, stress and other life style related issues. 

I will stop boring you with my nitty gritties and let me show you one of my therapies, which really worked well for me.

Lush green Syngoniums at the altar

Cacti in Cacti shaped pot

Flowering Adeniums at the terrace

Fish tank, the larger ones hiding 

The fish tank and the plants

This year's new year gift to my
friends at office, plant babies

Marble money plant, from Sudha
Look at the tortoise pot

Arent these fellas cute?

  

Tangled hearts from my sister

Snake plants, the variegated ones

Then there are these guys

mini snake plant 

  

Succulent tub

One final picture of my garden

patch of green from first floor balcony
looking lush green after a bath

Confessions of a Plant mom

My tryst with plants started from my childhood, to be precise. One of the duties assigned to us, grandchildren at our grandparents’ place, where we spent our summer vacation, was watering the plants. We had long row of croutons that grew from the gate, to the front of our century old ancestral home, that would measure around 100 feet. When these two rows, reached the steps that led to the house, there were two rectangular patches, which had flowering perennials and annuals that included roses, lilies, jasmines, zinnia and chrysanthemums. After watering them, we also had responsibility of decorating the altar with flowers and leaves in two white colored ceramic vases, in preparation for an hour long prayer. Dinner was served only after the elaborate prayers.

The flower arrangement everyday would be a collaborative effort with my brother and cousins and we did it joyfully.  As I key in this, I get to remember the fresh fragrances of the flowers that we used to pluck.

In Chennai too, where we lived, we had enough space for a decent garden that would bear flowers and fruits.  I remember visitors to my parents place always went away with produce from our garden – papaya, guava, bitter oranges (citron), drumsticks and coconuts. Thanks to my grandparents and parents, love for plants and some intelligence in nurturing them has been instilled in us, children.

The love for my plants resurfaced when we moved into the place we are in right now and I am a proud plant mom, for many years now.  And here are some confessions that I haven’t made to anyone at all, all these years.

1. Love the scent of soil and love laying my hands at it.  A garden takes a lot of effort, even if it is a few pots and I always start with gloves and gardening equipment, but in less than an hour, you will see me muddy in my hands.
2. I have killed plants by over watering.  Not always though.  But yes it happens
3. Okay allow me to let the cat out.  I steal plants.  Not always.  But whenever I get an opportunity, I do. Like let’s say I am walking on the road and I see plants on the roadside, I take a small cutting which I am sure would grow, much to J’s annoyance. (If you invite me home, and I am comfortable with you, I would rather ask you and take a cutting, but otherwise, be sure I will steal )
4. I have stolen plants from international locations too.
5. I also firmly believe stolen plants grow much better. 
6. I talk to my plants.  As if they are people.  I sometimes get angry with them,  I cajole them to flower up, tell them they make me feel happy.
7. Plants are my therapy – have always been.
8. I gift plants and encourage others to be plant parents
9. People who know me well gift me plant babies and some have gifted cute planters
10. I don’t name my plant babies.  But I would know their technical names – Syngonium, Arrowhead, tangled hearts, philodendron, Aloe vera, pothos, snake plant, peace lily, cacti, coleus to name a few from my collection.
11. Even on a holiday, I would be worried if my plants are watered and if they have enough shade or if they will be over-watered, if it rains
12. Touching my plant babies makes them happy and they grow better.  Don’t tell me otherwise.
13. Pinching plants and grooming them is a weekly affair
14. I bathe my plants and gloat looking at their freshness
15. Will you believe if I told you, I have carried pots and planters from all over the world for my plant babies
16. Half an hour every day  and few hours every weekend is spent with my plant babies.
17. Sun-bathing the indoor plants once in a while is also a ritual
18. My real baby, Dennu, thinks I love my plants more than him.  J has no such doubts, cos he knows that is true.

And that's a lot of confessions at one go 😊 sincerely hoping that i have not turned any of my readers into haters after all these.

DIY reveal

We both, J and I, are DIY enthusiasts. Over a period of time, we have done a whole lot of projects, which is all around our home. Just that, I have missed recording the progress of those, amidst all the action. 

But this one that I am going to tell you about, was caught in the camera, and you will witness the evolution process. 

The version one of our Altar circa 2006

A sheesham wood console table, idea by yours faithfully, was used as our altar for more than 7 years, after we moved here. After placing an order, this console table took almost six months to reach Chennai as the vendor got this custom made based on the design given by us, along with our dining table, all the way from Madhya Pradesh. A chest of draws, ordered along with this contingent also arrived and it was worth all the wait.

Though the console table caught all the attention of visitors who dropped by, I had other ideas. A faux fire place. Chennai does not definitely need a fireplace, but I was in love with fire places, so I was dying to get a faux fire place. The idea rattled J, and he couldn’t understand my sentiments nor the necessity for a fire place in Chennai.

I toyed with that idea, mentally ran through having it in the specific place with dimensions and when we got into repainting, discussed it with the consultant, who  helped with the revamping and painting. He was excited & looked at all my designs, I also took him to a place where I had seen a similar structure made of cement. After fairly understanding my idea,he brought in a guy who puts in movie sets and got this structure up, for a really competitive price.

It came out very well. And here is a picture of it.

Altar, after our revamping in the year 2013

But, I was not convinced. I felt the fireplace merged with the wall it didn’t get the highlight it deserved. Everytime I crossed the fireplace, I kept wondering what could be done to make it stand out. Another coat of paint? A darker shade? Then it struck me, I love brick walls and if I can get a brick wall installed there it could serve both my purposes – a highlight and a brick wall.

An installation of brick wall is going to be messy and J is not going to agree to it. Neither did I want to go through all that trouble. I worked on it, did some research, which took some years by now and then zeroed in on an adhesive wall paper with a brick wall print. Ahem.

I ordered it, sweet talked J into helping me, knowing fully well, I can get him to complete this project.

We started with making sure the surface was smooth by sanding it first. A template was cut using newspaper as the fireplace had tiered edges. The brick wall paper came in a roll that was 10 x 1.5 feet which meant we had to work on some serious calculations, cutting and adjusting the available material so the wastage is less. And we set to work on it, the rest I would let the pictures do the talking. Here is the progression.

Making of the template -  man in action

Template on the wallpaper

The process of sticking it 

The edges were difficult to be cut into
templates 

The edges after sticking them

It looks pretty simple, but it took almost after 4 hours of cutting pasting and sticking, here is the final result.

So this is how our Altar looks right now !!!

After all the efforts, I am going to show you just one more picture, taken from our balustrade.

Did you guys like it as much as I did?

Surprises of Maldives

Finding something fancy and stuff that catches your attention during travel is common. The last time we girls traveled to Vietnam, I had posted some of the quirks that we noticed. Maldives also had a few and I thought I need to share it on my blog for you all.

Faux coconut leaves :

Coconut palms dote the shorelines of this island. Many of the villas and structures in the resorts use faux coconut leaves (dried version), which beats the original, made of flexible fiber. Maybe the maintenance is easier and it could last longer. Even in Hulhumale, saw some of the structures using them to bring in the aesthetic element. And its difficult to spot the difference, and the artificial ones definitely beats the original from what you can see in the pictures.

The original and the artificial ones 

The Central Park :

Look at all those amenities 

At Hulhumale that we stayed on arrival at Maldives, where mostly working class people live, we came across this fairly large park called the Central park. Crowded with health conscious people of various nationalities, a couple of facts impressed me about this park. For a small island, the park was large.

Considerable number of trees, seating arrangements, walking / jogging tracks, a nice water fountain was on one side of the park, on the other side was a skating rink and adjacent to it was an array of gym equipment. There were 15 different ones, two of each kind open to general public, which is a thoughtful gesture. The equipment was of good quality, and we saw many using it, including women in hijabs. We can spend a couple of hours in this park without getting bored.

Maldivian traditional chess 

Traditional chess : 

On the roadside, we saw a set of Maldivians playing something like chess, though the chess pieces looked very different.

Stopped to have a chat, ( much to the embarrassment of J), clicked a picture of them playing it with their permission. The men didn’t want to be in the picture and they told that it is their traditional game like chess.

A book cart :

The Book cart 

This novel concept was seen on the beach of Hulhumale, an unmanned book cart left open for public. A collection of books are kept here for people to read, instructions on use pasted on the side. You can take books to read from here, and you can donate your books as well. Notice this cart uses original coconut palm leaves that has started deteriorating a bit.

Trust me, this one stole my heart.

Food habits :

In a few local restaurants that we were passing by, we could see the natives eating mounds of rice with spicy looking curries and vegetables, just like I have seen old traditional people from my native, Kerala, eat.

Friendly cats :

The islands has a number of well fed, good looking cats which are friendly. Though I am not a cat person, they did make my head turn, also made me smile with their playful behaviors and surprisingly didn’t see a single dog or any other animal. (Colorful fishes though made up for the lack of other animals)

Few playful strays at the Central Park 

A pretty feline

Hola fruit :

I have seen this fruit on the net before, but Hola fruit surprised with its colors and size in the vegetable market of Male. Almost the size of Jack fruit, opens to a colorful inside.

Hola fruit, as big as a Jackfruit

Colourful insides of a Hola fruit

Postbox :

At the Male airport, happened to see a functional post box. Red and hot. Must have been ages since i came across an in-use post box at an international location. 🙎

I am in still in use, twice daily, red and hot 

In contemplation : Maldives

When the once in 25 years vacation is to an exotic dream destination, you are left with starry eyes and awesome memories of a lifetime.  And that’s exactly what happened to us in our trip to Maldives.  Gratitude for being able to make it overwhelms both of us. Yet, there are a few things I have mentally noted down, while contemplating,  so I will never have to say, “Sigh!  I wish I knew how to do that!”  or I should have planned that earlier. 

1. Learn swimming :  Right from the time I had been married, this guy would show off his ability to swim.   Those days it used to be in the water bodies in Kerala, his hometown, which were abundant with them.   Lakes, ponds, rivers and canals, he would jump and swim in them and leave me all grinning and asking him for more.   Later in swimming pools his strokes in the water had me all mesmerized.  I knew he has done ocean swimming, but when I saw J swimming in the ocean, swiftly and even had the Maldives boat crew stunned, I told myself, take at least basic swimming lessons.
2. Learn cycling :  I am ashamed to disclose this to you all, I cannot ride a bicycle. Yep.  True story.  Paradise had cycles in every corner and the guests were allowed to use it.  But what’s the use for someone who cannot ride?  And since I couldn’t J didn’t ride it either.   So that’s another one to add in the list
3. Scuba diving :  for the fear of going down into the depths of an ocean, I kept putting this off during our trip.  Finally it was scheduled on the last but one day before our trip was to close.  Call it our misfortune, the boat that we were to leave developed snags and the authorities couldn’t get another diving boat for us as they insisted that we have a 24 hour break before we board our aircraft after we do the diving.  This was one of the major misses of this trip. I am going to regret this forever.  Next time Maldives, or some other place, we want to dive.
4. Authentic, original Maldives :  We realized this after our trip.  What we saw as Maldives was the dressed up Maldives.  The resorts, Male and Hulhumale were all the artificial side of Maldives.  We really do not have an understanding of the Maldivians as we didn’t meet any of the authentic inhabitants of the island.   We should have gone to one of the islands where they live their ordinary and real lives and had a view of it to understand their lifestyle better.
5. Buy an underwater Camera :  We are kicking our butts for not picking one before we even planned for this trip.  And now we just have our memories to resort to
6. The last one is the usual one when I travel – Always wish I had stayed there a little more longer.  A week in Maldives is really long enough, but yet…

Magical Maldives

Caution :  Photo heavy long post.   Don't tell me I didn't warn you 👩

Maldives is a travel destination for honey mooners and the newly weds and by those standards, J and I were 25 years late. Actually, as I key in this I am laughing out loud (LOL). 

On our 25th Anniversary

The 25th anniversary plan was to spend a week of laid back time, doing absolutely nothing but just unwinding. More for J than me, he has been a workaholic all his life, been there for everyone in his family and mine, physically, emotionally and otherwise, literally spinning around all these years and a break was becoming a necessity. So our pit stop after Srilanka was Maldives, Hulhumale to be specific and then to an Island resort where we planned to just laze around.

Just outside the Male Airport

Maldives always conjures up pristine beaches, white sand beaches, beach villas in the sea, exotic food and a mesmerizing skyline in our minds and Maldives didn’t ever disappoint us. The various shades of blue, that I have never seen in my life all these years ( and that’s quite considerable number of years, considering my age). The shades of blue that I have seen only in my paint palette was alive in the wild nature at Maldives – Teal, Aquamarine, baby blue, Turquoise, Electric blue, Blue green, Navy blue, Prussian and Royal blue and much more when the sky and sea merge. Such vibrant colors, Maldives makes anyone feel like they are in a make-believe world. 

Male is the capital city of the Republic of Maldives, which itself consists of around 1200 islands, divided into multiple groups of islands called atolls located in the Indian Ocean. Tiniest country in the world, the capital is just 5.8 square kilometers. We could cover the entire Male city in less than half an hour with ample time to look around, by foot. That’s how small that place is. Maldives also imports every damn stuff from other countries primarily from India and Srilanka except fish, including their workforce. Their primary source of revenue is from the tourists and they should be doing well as their currency is atleast four times the value of ours. 

At the park in Hulhumale

The Male airport, Valena international airport is one island by itself and is connected by a man made road to Male city and another man made island called Hulhumale, where we stayed on arrival. Hulhumale is smaller than Male city and most working class people, including the expats from various countries live here. It just took an hour to go around Hulhumale, which has a nice beach, a good park, few eateries and a football ground. Easily just as big as one of the societies or condominiums in India. 

Old Friday Mosque - The oldest Coral
Stone structure in Male

On the day tour that we took up, to cover Male, we saw the presidents house, which was a small villa, the Police headquarters, Grand Mosque, Sultan Park, the fish market (smaller than a department store here), the vegetable market and another tiny mosque called the Hukuru Miskiy mosque, which is also known as the ‘Old Friday Mosque’ and it is one of the oldest and most famous places in the Maldives. It was built in 1658 by Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar. The structure is made up of coral stone and has peculiar and unique architecture and is honored as one of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. In fact, to me this Mosque looked almost like a temple in Kerala. All this in half an hour by foot and the guide told us, we are done with Male and you can now go to the ferry that will take you to the Island resort. 

The ferries and boats are the main mode of transport here. Westerners dominated amongst the tourists adding up to 80 percent of the people we saw and the remaining were Asians. Indians much rarer. Just a irrelevant statistic for you folks.

So, did we relax? That was the best part of this mile-stone vacation as we kept calling it. We had picked up snorkeling equipment from India, given the fact that J may not like to put in something used by others in his mouth, and we both geared for snorkeling. I had my collection of books in my Kindle, and a book that I literally stole from Dennu’s stack. “24 hours” a thriller by Greg Iles and I was also reading Viktor Frankl’s Mans search for Meaning. Have never read like this continuously without a care in the world, since my teenage and before marriage years. Greg is a fantastic story teller and I found it difficult to leave the book down. My gratitude journal accompanied me and I wrote in it from the serene beaches. A bliss that I never even knew existed. I finished Greg Iles by the time we got back. 

It took us around 25 minutes by speedboat from Male city to reach our place of stay, that we had finalized after all the research and Paradise Island resort welcomed us with all its charm and both J and me were allured by it. This place is a literal paradise and we knew why it’s a honeymoon destination, when we set foot there. And both of us have concluded that Maldives is the best place of earth, we have visited together so far. Ahem.

Paradise Island resort at Night

In local language it is called Lankanfinolhu Island and has nothing but the resort. That’s how most islands in Maldives are, owned by the resorts. It’s a scenic Island, luxurious and though there are around 500 villas of varying grades, since its pretty spacious, we rarely found anyone photo bombing or any crowd at all. Many times especially in the early mornings, during our strolls, I have felt we were the only ones in the island. The beach is pristine and I never wanted to stay indoors except when I went to sleep. 

Paradise Island Resort 

The sand which probably is the residue of all the coral is a fine powder here on the beaches and its soft unto touch. I played with it like a little child. The fine sand was almost like the rice powder which I use to make Puttu, ( steamed cylinders of white rice powder) back home – sigh! What a comparison! Walking on the beach barefoot on soft white sand, was nothing short of magic. I even did my early morning jogging ritual. The villas were spacious with every facility a five star resort would offer, with open to sky bathing areas along with closed ones too. 

So what did we do there which turned this trip magical? Let me list a few for you 

Snorkeling 

We went with a professional for a snorkeling trip and we started with practice for an hour. J enticed the crew with his ocean swimming skills and jumped straight into the ocean without even a life jacket and swam to the sand bank where we were scheduled to take our snorkeling lessons. I needed a life jacket and a bit of goading to jump in to the water, but I managed my fears, like a lady 😊 This was the first snorkeling experience for both of us, and J took to it like a fish to the water. I needed an Instructor to guide me and hold my hands, until the sheer beauty of ocean outdid my fear and much later I realized, the instructor had let go of my hands. He took almost an hour for practice session which was by itself awesome. The water was crystal clear, the coral reefs were white in color and against them the fishes so bright and colorful. I kept saying WOW, and my voice would be muffled through the equipment. I guess my eyes have never opened this wide, ever before, looking at all the beauty, ocean had to offer. We were spoilt for choice with all the sea life there.

The crew then sailed off to deep sea and our actual snorkeling happened there. Until I snorkeled in the deep seas of Maldives, hadn’t remotely thought that the ocean is such a magical place. We saw millions of fishes, with vibrant colors and the scenes down below in the ocean were completely out of the world. The colours were nothing close to anything that I have set my eyes on, in planet earth. We had gone at the peak season, ( it was a coincidence as our anniversary falls in January) and the visibility was excellent and the marine life that we saw was so diverse. TLC and the national geography channels that we watched all these years, didn’t do any justice to what we saw in the ocean bed, such was the abundance of fish. 

Snorkeling in Shallow waters at Cinnamon resort 

Corals, Colorful eels with tiger print on them, schools of Manta Rays, graceful and disciplined, such huge and large fishes showing us that they are the gentlest of the creatures, bright colored clownfish, parrotfish, Lionfishes, Angelfishes and snappers and many others that I couldn’t identify made it an unforgettable experience. J swam away from us for sometime, in the opposite direction and realized that there were really huge fishes including sharks and so he got back. I also saw a few scuba divers down below and watched them for a while. They were touching the corals and taking pictures 

My fears overtaken by the beauty of the ocean, I could remove the equipment once in a while and talk to the trainer and ask him questions about the marine life. All of the remaining days in the resort, J would go into the seas for Snorkeling, I would remain close to the shore and snorkel and put our equipment to good use. 

Kayaking

Enjoying the kayak ride

This is a seated water sport which allows you to paddle across the open sea. The paddles are double sided with a blade on each side and I figured out J is pretty good at paddling in the sea. He could paddle to the deep sea, hassling even the instructor, but yes the views were breathtaking. The only instruction I got from J was “Vincy, sit still”. I should have joined the paddling, but ladies do get some concessions you see, especially if you do not know how to do it. The best was since J was around, I was brave in the waters. 

Dolphin cruise 

Tamed Dolphins are a sight to watch in water shows hosted in many countries and though we have watched plenty of them, cruising along with Dolphins in the wild and in their habitat was a first time for us. Luckily for us the crew told us the previous day, they couldn’t spot a single Dolphin and to our surprise, we had 10 to 12 of them showing off their graceful swimming skills cruising along with us for more than 20 minutes. The best part of this cruise was the moment they go underwater, the crew clapped hands and whistled and they would come up and swim with us. The crew were equally surprised and called us lucky to have seen so many of them and for pretty long time. 

Shark feeding 

Sharp at 7.00 pm everyday, sharks of varying sizes, some probably as big as me or even bigger, come near the patio of Farumathi restaurant, one of the 5 restaurants in the resort. Since we knew about this schedule, we were there much earlier and we saw some lone fellas, floating around the patio, which was 15 feet above the sea water. Since the water was clear we could see them coming from near and far. Looks like the sharkies know the schedule too, at 7.00 pm, an employee starts feeding them with fish and there is a riot of these fellows for the food. At least around 50 of them, falling over each other for the food, while the guests from around the world gaped in astonishment, cranking their cameras and mobiles to capture the rare scenes. 

Manta ray feeding 

Hulhangu Bar is near the lobby and entrance of Paradise and it faces the entry way of the resort. It is on the shores of this bar, in the evening, with flood lights et all, you get to feed Manta Ray fishes. Manta is a Spanish word for Cloak or shawl. Now you get the connection? These come so close to the shore and an employee feeds them with fish pieces and they timidly eat out of your hand. If you are brave enough, that is. We both fed them, multiple times and I also patted some fellas. They seem to actually like it. Its nice the resort has these activities that keep the guests engaged. 

Hammock in the sea 

This was heaven

Paradise has set up a hammock in the sea ( yes there was one installed in the sea water). You can swim up or walk up, ( you know what I would have done – I actually danced up) to that hammock and lie there peacefully for as long as you want, provided it is free. There is someone there most of the time, and you may have to wait up in the shore for it to be free. The little movements of sea water would rock you in the hammock and make you feel that you are gently travelling in the sea, only to wake up to find you are in the same place. Again a dreamy feeling. 

Island hopping – Cinnamon Island 

Cinnamon Dhonveli resort at a glance

One of the things we did in Maldives hop to another Island, called Cinnamon Island. Bur after Paradise, Cinnamon failed to impress us. It was smaller, the shoreline was not as smooth as paradise – too many corals on the shore that would poke the feet, though the food and hospitality was awesome in this place. They had continental, Italian, Japanese and have lost count of their counters now. I tried a special fish noodles that had oysters, shell fish and baby octopus. I should admit that I am not adventurous with food and had to get a earful for J, for wasting the food. The dish was spicy and tasty, but I couldn’t put up with the chewiness of the fish. We both snorkeled here too, yes we carried our equipment. 

Photo shoot at the Sand bank 

This one beats all our experiences as the crew helps with a photo shoot. The boat rides up into a sand bank which would be 200 square meters of sand bump in the middle of the sea and since it is a photo shoot, I should let the pictures do the talking. Shouldn’t I?

Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would do something like this ! 

There’s a lot more that we did. In our own pace that is.  For example, we ate like there was no tomorrow. With the varied cuisines available around the clock, I am sure I have put on few pounds of flesh easily. And also, I read, I wrote, I dreamed, I walked barefoot, and looked at J snorkeling at a distance for hours together from the glistening white sands of Paradise. It was all nothing short of a dream come true. 

A milestone marked in Exhilaration.