… and suddenly, this morning, I realize that we are at the end of our journey in the Indian Ocean.
In two days, we would have crossed the Strait of Malacca, Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean taking 14 days for the journey – time has flown. The ocean has changed from deep blue to dirty grey.
S and I had stood, on 21-st February 2018, looking into the Indian Ocean from Cape Agulhas. We had reached there a little before sunset. We had driven off the highway to Cape Town and into the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rolling hills, crossing sleeping towns to reach the rocky areas at the Cape. At the cape, we had walked around the southernmost point of Africa, enjoyed the last view of the sun before it disappeared over the horizon, before driving to our hotel in Arniston. I do not remember us walking to the lighthouse but remember seeing the lighthouse.
There was hardly any life in the town around and Arniston seemed to have just our hotel. We had woken up early morning to catch the sunrise over the Indian Ocean. At that moment, I had noticed that there were fishing boats tied to the bay. At breakfast, we had noticed that the hotel was packed, and the breakfast area was filled with septuagenarians – we had wondered whether we should come back here when we are closer to their age. After breakfast, we had walked around a bit at the beach before we left for Cape Town. We were doing a holiday that people 30 years older seemed happy to do – I had felt very much like I have arrived at a very mature stage in life.
S and I were returning to Cape Town, to fly back to our respective destinations, after a few days with our MBA friends at Buffels Bay. A holiday time, the houses in Buffels Bay were hardly occupied, we had walked along empty streets to the empty misty beaches where birds flew down fearlessly. Those days, we had had dinner once at Knysna, bungee jumped at Bloukrans and driven almost all the way to Plettenberg Bay (if I remember right, even parked in a very packed parking place there but my memory fails me there – what did we do there?). In one of the memorable events, all of us had driven to the Wilderness beach, spent the evening alternately watching the ocean and beautiful beach houses that lines the beaches. I particularly remembered this beach – there were fishermen fishing at the beach, there was a beautiful beach house that I could not stop looking at and wishing I could live there, the pace there was extremely relaxed – most of all, I loved the name – Wilderness – it appealed to my spirit. Later that evening, we had had dinner in a local restaurant before returning to Buffels Bay.
This time, I am on a ship, we take a whole day to cross the same coast. In front of me will be Arniston and the Agulhas light house at midnight. Through the afternoon, we move from close to Plettenberg bay towards Cape Agulhas. I see Bloukrans, Knysna, George, Wilderness, Mossel Bay on the navigation map of the ship. I zoom in and see Buffels Bay. The crew are amused at my excitement and are happy to indulge my requests to zoom in, zoom out and look at the distance between the coast and the ship and for the thousandth time check at what time we will reach Cape Agulhas – the currents that helped us speed up have not helped my case. At that time, I had assumed that I will never see a sunrise from more eastern part in Africa than where I was and that will stay true because we will be at Agulhas
post-midnight – 4 hours earlier than I expected.
We took more than 8 hours from the eastern most point when we passed by the eastern most point of South Africa to reach Port Elizabeth. It will be yet another 15 hours before we cross Cape Agulhas. In the morning, we moved at 19 knots speed thanks to the current from the aft side. I will not be able to take a picture of Cape Agulhas from the ocean to send to S. I so wanted her to relive our time there. Neither will I be able to take a picture of the sunset at that point – we will be too late for that. Our hotel in Arniston will remain my eastern most point in Africa to catch the sun over the Indian Ocean. The clouds hid the sun from us this evening.
The meaning of slow travel is just beginning to dawn on me – it took 14 days for that to happen. It took us a week to cross Bay of Bengal and part of Indian Ocean to reach Mauritius. We had to cross the Lakshadweep waters before we came upon Mauritius – we anxiously waited for the Mauritius when we realized how close we would be going towards it.
In 2016, we had planned to be at Le Morne, a resort at the western coast of Mauritius a bit south of Port Louis that we crossed last week. Later, we had changed our plans. We had moved to a boutique hotel in the Eastern coast: La Maison d’Eté. After picking up our rental car at the airport, M and I had driven to the eastern coast – a bit to the northern side. We had passed groves of trees close to the ocean. All of a sudden, our car navigation had told us to stop at what seemed to be a gate. The signs had announced that we had arrived – the parking was on the opposite side of the gate. We had parked and announced our arrival at the gate. We had been led to our small cottage right by the ocean with a 240° view of the beach with huge windows opening directly into the ocean and the beach. I had then spent my whole long weekend working – it was the first month in my, at that time, “new” team.
Later, we had driven around the whole of the eastern part of Mauritius listening to Bhojpuri radio in the car – Bhojpuri in Creole accent is an experience one should not miss. We had been accompanied by songs of my younger days – we had driven across the sugarcane fields, crossed temples, visited a Shiva temple and visited the market at Mahebourg (markets that reminded me of the fish markets my grandmother used to send me with our household help Ammukuttyamma – only, this time, the currency and language where different – the people looked the same, the market looked almost the same). We had met one of our friend’s friend there and the warmth of the people was reflected in the way she enthusiastically took to us though we were strangers. We had visited a typical Creolean house that had been converted to a museum. This had reminded me of the British Bungalows in places like Ooty.
B, our co-passenger on the ship, wanted to know stories of Mauritius – he would like to visit it one day, he said. I was not sure of how I could explain that it is the mixture of Creole, French, the
Indian”ness, everything together that had made us fall in love with Mauritius. The OOW (Officer on Watch) that day, told us “Reunion” is also a lovely island. It made me realize that even these islands have so much to discover in them. We had but seen only a small little part – just the eastern part of Mauritius.
All of a sudden, Indian Ocean seems to be a small ocean. From Maldives, we soon crossed over to Mauritius and came to Madagascar quickly and finally, we were at the east coast of South Africa. Tonight, we will cross South Africa too and will move into the Atlantic. Most of the Indian Ocean treated us well – calm sunny weather. The warm weather reminded us that it is summer in the southern hemisphere. The ocean treated us to beautiful colours, clouds, some nice sunsets, rainbows, stars, a full moon.
The Indian Ocean is reluctant to part with us – the ocean has turned from deep blue into dirty green grey. The waters have become choppy. From 1m high waves, we are now at 3m high waves – tomorrow morning, when we hit the Atlantic, we will be at 4-5m high waves. We wonder what the next 2 weeks in the Atlantic will bring to us.
Life of P(ay)i 