To: The first long outing - The Andaman

Test check: Writer living or dead? 

This one is not coming straight from the writer's heart, but out of the urge to break the blogging drought that seems to have shaken up (or rather deserted) this space for quite a long time now.

There are a lot of things that are happening for the first time, and I believe if I start to gather my thoughts, I'll pen something worth recording.

Starting with the 10-day long trip.

It must have been evident from my blog posts that I've lived a boring, not-so-outgoing life so far. All I have are routine life experiences - how it went on in school, college diaries turning into office memoirs and general observations.

So, when I got to know that I'd be out of home for more than a week at a stretch, instead of getting excited, I got a bit worried, given the fact that I keep on falling sick every month or so.

To elaborate, I get tired easily; I mean, I feel like 60 in my late 20s. Will I be able to walk long distances? (Yes, I did. I, who had earlier achieved the goal steps i.e. 8000 steps only once, covered distances which I would have otherwise taken one more week to complete.)

Next, as I've already announced many times, I am very choosy in my food. At least this part could have excited me, as there were plenty of fast food options. But then, who can survive on such foods for long? They look (and taste) well only for a short while. The yellow dal that I rejected in my platter at home was the food that we ordered from a 4-star hotel. That's what a mature adult would do who wants to end the trip healthily. Did I forget to mention I ordered plain khichdi too - with no veggies and no extra spices added?

Thirdly, I boarded my first flight and undertook my first ship travel too. As I would've imagined it, it should have been a separate blog post, giving a detailed outlook and my experience. Although it was a one-of-a-kind experience, both the interiors didn't really catch my fancy.

In case you were brought onto a flight blindfolded, you wouldn't be able to tell that it's a plane. You only know you are on a flight if you look out of the window. From inside it looks like an AC bus only. Of course, before landing and taking off, the shakes and tremors would obviously give you a churning feeling in your stomach and pressure in your ears.

And the same goes for a ship. The motion of the waves underneath creates a sensation in your head. However, in both cases, even if you are not jittery about travelling, the repeated instructions given by the staff regarding the placement of sick bags with each seat can possibly make you slightly nervous and sick too.

Fourthly, I never stayed out on a trip for more than a night, and there I was, living on the land which is not even connected by road, let alone Swiggy, Zomato et al. Even if you wish to abandon the trip and head home, you just can't. For doing that, you'll have to secure bookings with the waterways and airways in advance.

Fifthly, I am a non-swimmer. Completely naive. And we chose the destination for the trip to be an island. Trust me out of the 8 days on the island, we were in waters on all 8 days. Sightseeing was also only beaches and oceans, barring one day. On this single day also, we visited a city where one could reach by waterways only. Even the buses and cars had to board one large ship, which would cover the distance, and then vehicles, along with passengers, de-boarded the ship. Each day, we would complete the itinerary and come back with soiled clothes which had to be dried up even before sending them off to laundry.

To double up the 'watery game' a plan to visit the swimming pool was made. There, I had another MORBID EXPERIENCE (as if I had fewer such experiences earlier). Imagine the news headline 'A woman dies on her first ever trip'.

Let me spill the beans. So, my partner was trying to ease me out in the pool, teaching me the way to move my body to float. In my head, I always had this belief that I knew how to swim, although I never ever took any swimming lesson, not even remotely, digitally or in any other way possible. I just saw people swimming in videos, and I observed their actions and Ta-Da - swimming is easy, I thought.

So, intuitively, I felt this is my moment. Let's put my skills to test and without even taking a second, I followed the movement that he had just shown me. And I felt the pool was a never-ending ocean. That I'm going down, down and only down. My hands and legs trying to get above the water. I wasn't able to breathe, so I was trying to call out for help but couldn't, my brain thought, 'Oh! I'm dying. Why isn't anyone coming to save me?'

Then my tutor came to my rescue and brought me above the water, only to tell me that it wasn't minutes that had passed, but only a few seconds, and I wasn't way down the water, but sort of floating with only my nose and eyes buried in water. I coughed up intermittently, I lost my balance like an infant does and my legs were shaky too. I was laughing at the same time at my stupidity and confidence overconfidence.

It took some time to regain my normal balance in water, but this time I was cautious. I jumped in water (for it feels so springy that you are naturally being lifted up by water; it's like you are flying in the air and you have to put in effort to hold the ground), but by holding the bar, I tried to swim but with assistance. I experienced oceanic waves but with support.

No doubt the trip was an exceptional experience, with each beach having unique characteristics: some had triple coloured waters, the other had wheatish sand while some other had dead corals in its sand; but my first experience to the beaches has satiated my desire for beaches so much that now I don't even want to set the wallpaper having a beach.