Wandering Soul

Mushrooms – sounds like the usual fungi which we fondly eat as a pizza topping. But does that perception change when I add the word Magic before Mushrooms? Magic Mushrooms – psilocybin mushrooms also known as psychedelic mushrooms, I would say “THE MUST TRY” at Gili islands, yes they have psychedelic effect that kicks in 30-40 minutes after inducing the “Mushroom Shake”, the ingredients typically include tiny ready to screw you magic mushrooms(10-11 buds), huge pieces of pineapple, jaggery, sugar, soda and the Indonesian bhang is ready! The guy at the Sunset Bar offered us this drink on the night of arrival but we refused as we had to dive the next day, but we resolved that we would try this on the last night at Gili’s. The last night arrived and we were pretty much exhausted after the late afternoon dive, we were one beer down to get rid of tiredness hitting us hard and decided on ditching the diver’s Chinese dinner. I was almost freaking out reading the symptoms and effects of it,

As a child I was never really fond of darkness and that feeling didn’t change over all these years of growing up. So when I was asked to do a Night dive for the first time it did send some shivers down my spine. I could hardly think of what people can see in a night dive apart from very hard to spot nocturnal fishes. I still remember having checked my torch multiple times before gearing up or descending, but night diving with group of 5 was reassuring and that too 4 guys was boost to my uncertain thoughts of getting lost in darkness or inability to see much in darkness. So when Instructor asked me if I would like to go on a “UV Night Dive” with him, it was a prompt yes, I was not thinking beyond the word “Ultraviolet”, but soon “Night Dive “ followed and my euphoric balloon bursts.  My previous night dive was not bad at all, but it wasn’t inviting as well, it was just a one short dive to overcome fear for darkness and feel the adventure of it.  The pretentious me didn’t want to p

Have you ever forgotten to close curtains of your window either when you were too drunk or too lost to close them? I did, usually I wouldn’t prefer the sunrays flashing hot into my eyes on a Sunday morning especially after working tirelessly entire week. But that morning came as a surprise, it were the same sunrays that shone in my eyes and instead of going all mad about it I was wide awake as if that was the best sunrise ever, could be the vacation high, or I was really appreciating the fact that I didn’t need an alarm to wake up. It was late afternoon when we reached Gili T, we had nothing much to do other than looking for place to stay, renting bicycles and grab some beer. The first two were taken care of, now we were looking for a perfect spot to spend the evening at and what could have been better than a place called Sunset Bar that serves you Beer while you drool in the beauty of sunset at an island. It was the perfect place to be with not many people around, enjoying the

Only if knew I had to say this line for next 3 days all the time before rescuing the same instructor or fellow students for 100 th time, I wouldn’t have considered taking up this certification. And the tiring hours of ascending and descending every 5 mins to rescue someone enacting as tired, unconscious or lost gradually changed from having ball time learning to frustrating time when I had to do each scenario atleast three times with the instructor and other two fellow students. One of them reminded me of cry-baby, so I really didn’t miss the experience of diving with him. Steve the dummy The German girl was a better buddy. We saved Steve the dummy’s life intermittently, so often that we ceased to feel our hands on the first day, its draining to keep up with 100 beats per minute chest compression one set 15 mins odd on a huge playlist of songs matching bpm. Each time you miss a beat start all over again or rather each time you miss one step in safety procedures start all ove

Finally everyone arrived; Cry-Baby was staying at a 5 star resort just 100 metres walk from our guest house, MIA guy and Tourist girl found a budget place in Kuta. My inner alcoholic was satisfied enough after a bottle of Bintang only to make me super hungry. Just couldn’t wait to dig into some chicken. The first question instructor asked me on our way to grab beer “Are you a vegetarian or non-vegetarian?” the answer was pretty quick, I can’t do without Non-veg food once out and travelling. I could see his happy face as all he had for last few days was vegetarian hard-to-find food with Cry-baby. My Precious! Bintang! Me + Hungry = Boom! POW! Combination, hunger makes me less interesting and crankier especially when I have to choose out of all options to eat. All I could see around were numerous Warungs;  the Warungs look different across different places in Bali some may look shabby, some may look like bamboo shack, some may look unhygienic or some may look like next door restau

There’s no direct flight to Bali from Mumbai. Too Bad! The Enthu Cutlets like me wish to reach destinations ASAP. You atleast have one layover depending on airlines you choose. The most common route is Mumbai – Kuala Lumpur- Bali with cheap air tickets and multile airline choices. I already had a Singapore visa on me so I opted for Mumbai-Singapore-Bali and the reverse route back, while enjoying the perks of having father working for Air India. But with free things cometh the layovers. In my case the impatience was directly proportional to layover time. Although Changi Airport (Singapore) is known for best in-transit passenger facilities with around six gardens across three terminals, skytrain connecting the three terminals, also to my disbelief a movie theatre and a city tour facility if your layover is more than 4 hours, the four hours felt like longest four hours. One particular store reminded me of Comic-Con. It was name it and you get it store for all action figure buffs. I c

The solo trip to Andaman gave me enough credence to plan another solo trip but just to amplify the confidence it had to be an outbound/international. The prognosis of previous trip was that my inner traveller would start craving for more now on. Scuba has now become an integral reason for my trips, shooting off a travel bullet on Scuba’s shoulders. The inner peace I seek is still underwater and nothing can compensate that so I decided to do this outbound trip around my Birthday, only if I could dive on my birthday it would have been the best day of my life ever. Again the pre-planning started as soon as I got back to regular grind I guess that’s the moment you wish for some more, the travel hangover is not off yet and your mind fixated to another trip. Now ofcourse this trip had to be cheap, planning an outbound within 6 months of your previous overboard budget trip is super difficult. I had huge list of cheap places to Scuba; on the top was Cambodia, somewhere in between Bali and in

The vacillating personality in me screams from inside that this is what you should be resolute about. This is what you should be doing and this is it. I always felt I tried my hands at everything, almost every hobby as the matter of fact, be it dancing, drawing, karate, or other sports, I left them all halfway. Now that I am growing up or grown-up enough to understand how the world works, I realize how pursuing at least one of them would have made me a different person altogether, nevertheless, life is full of all things you are glad you did and regrets of not doing some of them. Howsoever, being indecisive all this while I have landed myself in a decently paying job, this was expected from an averagely a perfect girl like me, yet the traveler in me always wanted something else. The traveler in me wanted to go places, but this is not about the traveler in me, this is about coming to tryst at something you never thought would send you a calling, this is about me wanting to do someth