Guest Post by Padma Rao. Padma is a diver first, traveller second, along with being a motorcycle aficionado. She has dived across India and Philippines and considers Temple Reef to be one of her homes. She is very interested in Reef Building work, marine conservation and the ocean in general.
Sonia and me were destined to become long standing dive buddies, looking back at our never-ending little boat-chat the very first time, on that speed boat. Complete strangers back then in the Andamans.
Diving along the East Coast, Pondicherry was on our bucket list waiting to be ticked.
So during research on where to study diving further, we discovered our to-be-diving-home-turf Temple Adventures. And the whole plan worked out just about fine. All set to pursue our Advanced and Rescue courses respectively, self and dive buddy were super excited to welcome new times and progress further into the fanta-fabulous world of SCUBA.
Quiet port town : A motorcycle. Few beaches around. Foodgasm galore. Yea that pretty much summed up our Pondicherry diving sojourn. Not to forget, those iconic Temple Adventures parties (well us divers need an excuse to get-together and go wild yeah :p)
Diving with Temple Adventures : I do take pride to say that I dive with this oh-so fun and absolutely grounded bunch of global veterans. Iconic divers, photographers, conservationists. Temple Adventures staff and philosophy is a diverse blend of that and a little more.
This is THE dive centre around where you can learn, contribute and drive serious focus to the external world, on the global phenomena of diving and conservation. A lot of theory (was needed), lot of study time for hours on the staircase (our favourite spot), some superb dives headlined our time there. And adding some drama to the dives was our “Scooby-dive” Instructor Jonah (well that’s a local Jonah favourite term) dunking Sonia underwater on the pretext of wanting to be rescued! She did show a lot of stamina and strength, while saving a man almost double her frame. The fragile me (I don’t look fragile at all btw) was busy throwing up after popping some incessant number of bananas, and sitting pretty on the edge of an absolutely rickety-rockety boat in choppy ocean waters! How happy were we at the end of our certification!
Well that’s not the end really. I continue to be associated with this fantastic bunch (we met Blinky, a 3m Whale Shark chilling around Temple Reef this July), in several ways which I can’t let you know. Haha!
Looks like we have more stories to discover around this Southern port town, at 0 mm and 30!
Until our next undersea adventure!!
Padma Rao
PADI Rescue Diver
PADI Wreck Speciality Diver