SAYALI GOES BALI!

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 end was Maldives (only if I could do some cost-cutting with my daily lifestyle). With months passing Maldives seemed like ship sailed off far, wasn’t too sure of Scuba Diving in Cambodia, with list of to be diving places in the world does Cambodia even count? Enter “Finkicks” to the rescue; Commander Damle from my previous post suggested me Finkicks, to take care of my unfriend buoyancy. After a 3 hour confined water training and taking a good look at their entire office, the outbound trips map on one of the walls caught my attention and there it was Bali in September. But Bali was happening a week before my birthday and I had to forsake my plan of diving on my birthday, they say “the more the merrier” I say “the more the easier to convince your parents”.

Bali was on, but this time with a group of I don’t know how many men and women. All arranged by Finkicks, saved me the brain storming. One fine day I receive a text message asking if it was okay to prepone the trip by 2-3 days as it was just four of us (3 and a half men as my near and not so dear ones would have stated), changing to five of us two days before the trip. With daddy working for Air India, it was easy-peasy. I just had 10 leaves so I wanted to wind up everything in 9 days and one extra day for travelling. I always wanted to go Gili Trawangan; the famous party island had to be striked off from bucket-list. So, the customised itinerary consisted of 5 days in Bali and rest 4 days in Gili Trawangan. The certification monger which I tend to be after each Scuba trip wanted to finish off Rescue Diver (EFR) in this trip, that meant less fun-diving and more studies for first few days with enough time not sure of the money part to dive in Gili’s. They say September is the diving season in Bali because you can spot Mola Mola (Sunfish) then, which attracts lots of divers and by lots I mean being fin slapped underwater.  The D-day arrived I had to work half day as my flight was midnight. I remember people saying we have never ever seen you so happy; I was just waiting for clock to strike 4 pm and I would unleash that traveller in me.

I have decided to post short incidents/experiences/stories rather than narrating entire day.
For next few posts let me introduce you with the other characters of these stories:
Instructor – The master mind of this trip.
Cry-baby – The brat guy in the group.
MIA guy – Because he was missing in most of the action.
Tourist girl – One with long list of places to visit in Bali.


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