Bunnygoespop in Lakshadweep

Bunnies had heard of this fabled land, called Lakshadweep, which literally translates to “1,00,000 islands”. Now we knew where it was on the map and how beautiful it is from Google images – white sands (with no body on it), clear waters, coconut trees, etc. (GO Google IT!).

Red pin: The island in Lakshdweep we went to; Star in the middle of India: the great Indore.

After you have googled pictures of swaying palm trees and corals, let me tell you, those pictures aren’t just unreal, they are rather an understatement. Lakshadweep turned out to be so much prettier but first I have to rant about how to reach there.

So, we were also excited by the google images, and desperately wanted to combine it with our Kerala trip. But the question was how?

Laks has some islands with indegenous tribal populations, who haven’t come in contact with modern life and hence the islands are protected by the government (only a few islands are open to tourists). There are still no private tour companies allowed to operate and provide housing on the islands (which is good!). So we googled and googled, and then cut down through a myriad of outdated info about Laks and websites with real info about Laks, but which look outdated, to finally decide on an island, and how to reach there.

In a way, all this mystery and pain to book for Lakshdweep is actually good because then only the very determined travelers can reach there (and also the reason why it hasn’t turned into the next Goa). But I am a good bunny and here is the contact of the guy who is a Lakshadweepite and is authorized to book acco, etc. (do you know how long I had to look for him?! Now say something nice about me in the comments.)

So this is how we did it:

We popped in there from Kochi in this little flying machine. 

Lakshadweep already looked promising when we were about to land on this small island called Agatti. There was sea on both sides of the runway. Here is one of the sides:

We had to wait at the Agatti SPORTS (govt. tourism body of Laks) guest house for a good 2 h before our boat transfer because they said it was a Friday and people had to pray. But at least it was pretty:

 2 hours were too much to stare at this boat, so in this time I also drew this:

Later, we found out that others who had reached on Monday also had to wait there for more than 2h before their transfer. Hah.

Then we were taken on a small motor boat which took 4 hours to reach our real destination, a little 4 km2 cardamom shaped island (read paradise). Bunny is a very sea sick animal and doesn’t remember much of it than being half comatose all the way.

Paradise island is one of the few Laks islands with an indigenous population but we were secluded from them on the south end of the island in cottages, they called the Kadmat beach resort.

Here are some locals taking a stroll on the south end of the beach (above). The girls were super excited on seeing foreigners (yup me too). They were very chatty and spoke decent English. I wish I had some carrots to give them.

West side of the beach resort with more than 100 coconut trees (no I didn’t count them. The trees were numbered-look closely).

Now, the name beach resort is rather an exaggeration- very hard beds, no Wi-Fi, and very strictly scheduled lunch and dinner times. The quality of food reminded me of one of my primary schools, Vidyasagar, where the lunches was so bad that I used to be a super skinny kid (its true!). But hey, I am not complaining- quite the contrary. The place was so unpretentious that it made it charming. Plus, since everything is government controlled, things had a fixed price list! Although I must add that it was incredibly expensive still.

You could see sea on both the sides of the resort. This is the east side.

There were only a couple of other guests there and after eating almost each and every meal in the very tight meal schedules together (below), we were like a happy bunny family. We are even Facebook friends now. 😀

Oh and then there was all the fish. We snorkeled day in and day out and did two 12 m open water dives. Here is one of us walking on the sea bed.

(Show off)

In one of the dives, we saw this amazing octopus, perfectly camouflaged in the corals, being busted. Here’s a video:

We saw another octopus up close (like 2 mt away) rapidly change its colour (and texture seemingly!) one after the other more than 50 times! Perhaps she couldn’t make up her mind on which one to go with (HAHAHA).

One of the locals who was with us, and who in the first place had spotted this octopus, made me come up (we were snorkelling at this time) and asked in his very broken english, “eat octopus eat?”. I thought he meant that the octopus was eating. So I kept shrugging and he kept asking till one of us gave up. It was only later that it struck me, that he was asking if he should hunt the octopus for us. Argh, missed opportunity.

Locals who work as diving instructors now for the government

Although we didn’t pick up the octopus, this guy picked up a very pretty sea shell (shankh) from the sea bed, and wanted to smuggle it back. But I made him throw it back into the sea and felt all proud for being so environmentally sensitive. 

A school of fish going about their business in a place called “secret garden” (ooh). But you can also see that the corals are dying.:(

A picture of me snorkeling while the other group of divers had gone in. I must have looked so scary to the fish below.

So after watching plenty of Dories and Nemos playing hide and seek in the corals, and quite literally swimming  with schools of thousands of brilliantly coloured fish, and making locals throw sea back to the sea, and watching flying fish skip past, we hung out at the beach and saw glorious sunsets such as this one.

One of the evenings, we also watched these baby turtles making their way to the sea (sun actually) (below).

step 1: hatch from tiny eggs deep under the sand

Step 2: pretend to be rubbish which happen to have a similar shape, while heading towards the sea.

Step 3: swim to glory.

Next day at diving, one of us saw two adult turtles but I couldn’t (my glasses were fogged up and I could see only what was directly in front of me :() but hey,  I could still see the octopus!

At night, we watched the whole milky way light up*, and gave scores of these crabs a scare. 😀

*To tell you how little light pollution there was- Mercury cast a brilliant reflection on the sea at night. But bunnies didn’t know how to capture it in a picture.

One could have also visited the village on the island, but our days and nights were packed. It was all so beautiful that it was really tough leaving the place. The fact that we had to leave at 6 in the morning didn’t make it any easier. I do not remember falling in love with a place more.

Bunny has realized, bunny rather be a fish.

A thousand carrots to you Lakshadweep!