Rebranding India’s Party Town with Scuba Diving in Goa

Go goa?

Monotony and boredom become an ever-raging battle as you continue to grow older. At no other time was this more apparent to all of us than when we were riding our rented scooters through the charming by-lanes of Goa for the umpteenth time and found it to be tiresome. We were in the holiday capital of India and we were bored out of our minds.

Luckily, one of my friends spotted powerful allies in our ongoing battle with the usual; novelty and a sense of adventure. A board that advertised scuba diving in Goa was just the thing we needed to add depth to our holiday. We looked at each other nodded with glee.

We contacted the diving school right away and booked a dive for the next day. We had rediscovered excitement and adventure; it was hiding under the pristine waters that surround Goa all along.

Pre-dive

We reached the beach earlier than our instructed time. The instructors greeted us and geared us up figuratively with a quick briefing session. We then took a relaxing boat ride to one of the nearby islands from where we were going to dive. We had humpback dolphins keep us company throughout our ride.

Our instructors pointed out a number of historic and monumental buildings all along such as the Modern Light house, Governor’s Palace, Aguada Fort among many others. I, however, could not peel my eyes away from the golden glow cast by the morning sun on the pristine waters of Goa.

We geared up, literally this time around, getting into our dive suits once we reached the island and went through a scuba training session to get ourselves ready for the adventure that lay ahead.

The hidden world

We had consumed videos and images of scuba diving the night before but no amount of Googling could have prepared us for what happened next. Following our trained instructors we dived into the sea. A whole world, unlike anything I had ever imagined, was hidden underneath these turquoise waters.

There were fish of all shapes and sizes that swam right past us. Coral reefs that gleamed in a million different colors. This world underwater seemed alien but at the same time strangely familiar. The soothing silence accentuated the feel and the visual appeal.

At first I was tense and nervous but a few minutes in I was lost to the splendor that had captivated me. I did not even realize when the 30 minutes of the dive were up. It was only when the instructor pointed out that some of us were running out of oxygen, that this underwater spell was broken.

We spent all our time on the boat and in the scooter as we headed home discussing the dive. Scuba diving in Goa had allowed us to see not only Goa but the rest of the world in a different light.