Blue Whales of Sri Lanka

January started off well and a trip overseas to Sri Lanka happened. I've been to this beautiful island Nation many times in the past but now that the internal conflict is over and peace reigns, its a greater pleasure to visit and do business or go on a holiday. 

Before I start off on my Whale of a Tale, let me update some important information on travel to Sri Lanka. As of January 2012, all visitors to Sri Lanka need to apply and obtain an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization) before embarking on their trip. The one-arrival visa has been scrapped for all Nationalities except Singapore and Maldives, both of whom have given visa free entry to Sri Lankans and hence the reciprocal benefits. An ETA is  Visa that you apply, pay and receive approval entirely online. It is a very simple process, just visit this website and follow easy instructions: http://www.eta.gov.lk/slvisa/ It took me 10 minutes to complete, cost me $10 for a double entry visit visa and authorization came by email very soon after. For a limited time, the SL Authorities will still allow foreigners to come without the Authorization, go to an ETA desk at the airport, fill up forms, get Authorization and then go for immigration clearance. This will cost you more and waste so much time and the service may not be available in a couple of months time, so its better to do it online like I did. 

(whale watching boat)

Mirissa is a fishing port about 40 kilometres due East from Galle in Southern Sri Lanka. No one visited the place during conflict years because there was nothing going on except fishing. With the onset of peace and information moving freely, it soon came to light that a few Kms into the sea off Dhondra Point was a pod of "resident"Blue Whales. The best whale watching season in this area is between December and March. All of a sudden, with the news of the whales spreading, the sleepy village of Mirissa became a hotbed of activity with new hotels coming up and new boat operators taking to the Whale watching business. The Sri Lankan Navy pioneered the whale watching trips and still operate on certain days. 

(Look for the fine mist when the whale exhale)

What are these Blue Whales, you may ask. To put it simply, they are the largest animal on the entire planet. There is nothing living on Earth that comes even close in size to these magnificent leviathans of the Deep. Nothing. More info on these beautiful mammals of the Deep is available on another blog mentioned below. Whale watching trips leave very early in the morning and hotel pick ups start around 0600Hrs. There are around a dozen or more boats of various sizes and configuration, that are privately owned and operated. The charges can range from LKR 5,000 to LKR 9,000 (1 US$ = 113 LKR) per person. Once everyone's settled in the boat and life jackets put on, the Coast Guard comes along and takes down the names, passport number and signature of the passengers and makes sure that no boat is carrying more than 25 people. While this is good practise, there is no order or method to the operation of these Whale boats and their methods of chasing down whales leaves much to be desired among us Cetacean lovers who know a thing or two about Dolphins and Whales.

(This is close and they chose to surface nearby as we had no clue and were looking around for them)

So, after the headcount and paperwork got over, we left the fishing harbor of Mirissa and chugged into the open  Indian Ocean. Bread and cheese was served followed by bananas and bottles of water. It so happened, in a season known for flat water, a regional storm had affected the waves and it turned out to a jolly old nightmare. Jolly for me because I enjoyed the Wild heaving of the boat and thanks to my sea-legs, the Boat crew and I were left standing and nightmare for the remaining passengers, mostly foreigners who were constantly throwing up. For those who are naturally seasick or don't know if they are, maybe you should take some seasickness/motion sickness pills before the voyage.

(lone dolphin torpedoing on fish)

A brief glimpse of two Bottle nose Dolphins got our interest going and the anticipation of finding the big Blue Whales soon started to build up, an hour out at sea, heading into deeper waters. Two hours later and seeing plastics floating around in the Ocean thanks to humans all over the World dumping them everywhere, we finally managed to sight a spouting, a fine mist of air and water that is thrown up like a fountain when a Whale surfaces to exhale. Soon, the boats that had all spread over the Ocean started to chug to this point at full speed. After chasing more whale spouts here and there, we were finally lucky to get close to three of them just as they broke the surface and dived underwater. On a day of flat seas, one would have been able to take good photographs but on heaving seas, only a brief respite in the roughness coinciding with the whales surfacing, made it happen for our group. 

(pod of dolphins)

After 3 hours, the boat decided to leave the poor Whales to their feeding undisturbed and made way back to the harbor. On the return, we were treated to a delightful pod of Dolphins that were corralling fish together into a ball and tearing through them to feed. That was the highlight of the trip.

(video of the dolphin pod)

I made it to Galle for the evening and settled down near the sea shore at a chalet. It was back to Colombo the next day. While this trip was a week of good times and meeting people, there are more trips to Sri Lanka this year in the offing. There will be opportunities for me to visit more places and re-visit all the places that I have been to, in the past. More blogs may follow those visits. 

For those who want to read more about Blue Whales of Sri Lanka, this wonderful researcher friend Asha De Vos, a Sri Lankan doing her PhD in Australia, writes her blogs and posts her pictures and gives details about them, their feeding, their habitat and so on. Visit her blog here. Asha is also featured in this Aussie Video program about Blue Whales in Sri Lanka, just discount the title of the video because the size of the whale pods are not known and the title claims that this is the biggest colony in the World. Never mind that, watch the video above. There are other whales that visit these waters such as Sperm whales, we didn't see any but I'm hoping that someday in future, I'd be able to say hello to one.

Sri Lanka has everything going for it now. The friendly people, the beautiful tea gardens and of it's high mountain lakes and streams, the fabulously spicy food, the culture of thousands of years, UNESCO World Heritage sites, the land of Elephants and the famed Leopards of Yala and now, the magnificent Blue Whales. It's not like you needed one more reason to visit but it is there now. Enjoy responsibly, as green as possible (and I don't mean from being seasick!), visit and leave nothing behind except footprints and take away nothing except memories. Leave the environment as pristine as you found it. 

RECENT EVENTS - SINGAPORE

This blog is about recent events in Singapore. We had the Singapore National Day celebrations on 9th August and preceding this event were weekends of rehearsals including Helicopter displays, fighter jets formation flights, marching bands and so on. Here are a few videos of one of the rehearsals, with Helicopter displays.

(Boeing Chinook Helicopter flies low over Marina Bay & drops off commandos into the water)

(Boeing Chinook Helicopter accompanied by Apaches flying Singapore flag over the marina bay area)

The month of August was the hungry ghost festival. I had described details of this festival in a blog that I posed in 2007, click on this to find that article. Following this "Ghost month", as they call it, was the Mid Autumn festival or the Lantern festival. Again, I had posted an article with information and photos of this event in 2007, click here to find that article. I am posting some of the lanterns that lined up Singapore river this year (2011).

(Lanterns lined up near Singapore River, Clarke Quay)

Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) is a famous new attraction/theme park in Singapore. They have many interesting things to see and do and also have a casino. The sad thing is that they are planning a marine park and had commissioned a Dolphin trader to trap Wild Dolphins from the Solomon Islands. Around 30 or so Dolphins were caught. A few died in captivity in their holding pens and the rest of the 27 Dolphins face a future where they are going to be trapped in a pool to entertain people. RWS claims that the Dolphins are for "education" but they have not responded convincingly to question put to them about their motives. I was part of the "Save the World's saddest Dolphins" concert last month and continue to support ACRES Singapore, an NGO fighting for these Dolphins, for their release back into the Wild. Here are some pictures and videos of that concert. We are not calling for a boycott of RWS but please avoid visiting the marine section when it opens. No imposition here, just an appeal. I am against incarceration of any animal and for Dolphins who are empathic animals, our cousins of the sea, it's like putting innocent people in jail.

 (Kids above holding pics of captive Dolphins with their own names, performances from local singers below)

(More performers at the free concert in aid of the Dolphins, "Let the Dolphins go" RWS was the theme)

Singapore Art Museum hosted a light manipulation show early this month, this involves lighting on the Art Museum Building that moves according to sound, it appears as if the building itself is speaking, expressing, moving. Here are some interesting videos of the event, enjoy the movements of light!

(Simple manipulation above, more complex one below)

 Recently, last weekend in fact (17th September 2011) was the International Coastal Cleanup Day. This is a global event where volunteers and organizations engage in cleaning up rivers, beaches, mangroves, all coastal areas in order to rid the environment of various types of garbage. Plastics are among the most use and throw items in the World today. Sadly, we are poisoning our rivers and oceans with this debris and harming the marine environment. Many marine animals are trapped and die due to the trash that humans throw away carelessly. Data shows that there are around 45,000+ pieces of plastic in every square mile of Ocean!

(Above: Volunteers from Land Transport Authority filing off to do their bit near Seletar Mangroves)

(Our group of 6 public volunteers bagging trash caught in the mangroves)

(Look at the trash collected in our area of mangroves in 2 hours-bagged in biodegradable plastic bags)

(Our Group of coastal clean up crew L-R Vinodini, LiLin, Forgot, Self, Anjali, Melissa)

No Country is free or safe from trash. Singapore, among the more cleaner cities in Asia, isn't immune to improper trash disposal. We have a problem here, as big as any other place. So, on this day, 2400 odd volunteers (Including yours truly) all around coastal Singapore managed to clean up 13 kilometres of coastline, removing some 12,000 Kilograms of trash from the beaches and mangroves. Some of those pictures are posted here as well.

(Degraded beach and mangroves are overlooking Malaysia port of Pasir Gudang viewed from Seletar)

There's not much else to write about at this point. I'll blog more when time permits and something new and exciting happens. Meanwhile, my advice to all, please spread awareness about reducing unnecessary consumption, reduce the amount of plastics in your lives, use jute or cloth bags for your shopping always, dispose off trash responsibly. Do you little bit and maybe we can still save the planet or at least continue to maintain it habitable for all creatures including ourselves. Cheers.

2010-NO TITLE

2010 is nearly over. If we needed to be reminded about how fragile we are in the fabric of life, this year showed that with great clarity. While we continue to plunder and pillage the planet and make it uninhabitable for future generations, we are already feeling the intense heat, drought, floods, excess rain, excess snow, intense cold and so on.

The planet does not show any mercy on rich or poor nations and we are all equal to blame. For putting up stupid fronts and creating boundaries, for building walls and waging useless wars that cost lives, for lack of political will, we humans are nowhere close to evolution than we were when we lived in caves. I know, evolution for Gen X or Y or whatever the hell it is now, means connectivity and gadgets. I wish many of them can look beyond those tiny screens on their mobile devices and see that there's much more to the World and they may lose it from right under their nose.

This year I watched lethargy build, watched Government Babus sit on their fat behinds and do nothing, politicians brazenly looting the public while the public watched, of an intolerant/inefficient/corrupt system that fails people in each and every department. This isn't only about failed states and so-called "free" countries such as India, this is from a messed up World involving the now emerging bankruptcies (financial and moral) across the board in every Country. EU Countries are going broke and the US was always broke and didn't know about it. I watched a majority sit, sulk, blog and do nothing about it.

Personally this year, some good things happened too. I met more good people this year than ever before. I met dedicated people who are out there trying to do something for the common good, for the well being of all life forms and not with any intention of making money.

I finally got a long term goal in mind. Something that I can continue to do for a long time to come or at least till my time's up on this planet. None of that involves making tons of money, power or position for myself. That is giving me way more sense of fulfillment than anything else so far. I have found a closeness to our cousins, one that I had but never did anything about it in the past. The same cousins of ours that live in the marine environment, the ones I can relate to better than humans any day. The ones that have far superior intelligence, empathic, understanding, loving and yet remain threatened by most of our actions. Some of them are critically endangered and live in our river systems including my favorite Gangetic Dolphins. I'll work for them more this new year and the years to come and I'm glad about the building up of World wide support to my efforts.

This isn't about me. Not this planet, not this spec of dust at the edge of a vague galaxy among millions more. This is about the very fabric that runs through it, that binds us and holds us together, a fabric that is joy if it stays together in harmony, and causes destruction and misery when we meddle with it while exhibiting our selfish greed.

I hope and wish for a better life for all when the calendar changes dates. I hope and wish all people are successful at what they do. I hope I can blog more, when I'm not working with my cousins and bring their plight to everyone's attention.

This blog is a serious deviation from my previous year end blogs.
2005 I ended the year with a short blog about my trip to Colva, Goa.
The year ending 2006 was about aviation and that was my most prolific year of blogging.
2007 ending was about Singapore's New Year and I wrote hoping that humans would evolve and come out of this madness that overtook the region. Safe to say we haven't evolved even the tiniest bit so far.
2008 end piece was about an air show in Dubai, nothing hugely interesting.
2009 was about a visit to Bangkok. By now I had moved into a bit of travel writing. Maybe I was losing direction.
2010 awoke me. Showed me the dark side, personal loss of dad, chikungunya hit me with a vengeance, mom's health went erratic recently and so on. All well now. Sundarbans was a much needed release mid year. Dolphins kept me sane and focused. Working for their cause gave me inspiration. In future if you read or see me doing lots for them, know for certain that its them that matter, not I. Peace be with you!

Random Memories

There's been too much going on recently, that's good, in a way. So when I got some leisure time, a single malt with Ice in my hand and a surprising urge to write, I had no topic to focus on! So, here are some of my random memories of my travel days gone by.

A decade back when I did a lot of exciting trips, there was no blogging and I never kept a real diary of events and anecdotes that I should have written down somewhere, even on a piece of paper. In some cases I did record things in writing and in some cases I simply forgot to write. One such event was my adventurous trip into the jungles of Honduras, in a retired American school bus turned public transport, sharing seats with entirely Spanish speaking rural Hondurans and their chickens on bumpy mountain roads. I was on my way to see the Mayan ruins of Copan Ruinas, a fine example of the Mayan civilization with one of the best recorded historical evidence of how the Mayans lived. This is now just a slowly fading memory. I knew a smattering of Spanish then, having listened to tape recorded manuals for learning Spanish, available freely at the Miami Central Library in Miami, Florida (where else?). That was enough to equip myself to travel to a country that spoke no English and to wander around the little villages so equipped! That's another story to write, I know.

Maybe I should re-look at those photographs and try and remember little things to put down in a blog. The archaeologist hidden in me says, go and dig - Unearth those pictures and tell your story, my mind urges. After I take another sip of this fine single malt whiskey, I tell myself but never manage to go on this "dig".

There was this time, eight years ago that I went into the mountains in Central Cyprus to visit the famous lace making town of Lefkara. I still have some lace items from there hanging around. No blogging then either but I do have a few things written down for me to remember. That's a visit that I had enjoyed as well, the archaeologist hidden in me had the most fun. Lefkara was actually a diversion. My main goal was to visit one of the best preserved Neolithic settlement in Eastern Mediterranean, a site more than 8,000 years old (no, there is no mistake in the zeroes following 8). This place is unique in the sense that other than the fact that Neolithic people lived as a well organized society, there is also direct evidence, perhaps for the first time, of humans and cats living together. Human and cat remains have been found in graves, side by side, indicated a "master and pet" relationship. I am not surprised though, human - animal domestic relationship in my opinion, perhaps stretches far back in time than that. but here was direct evidence. Earlier schools of thought put the cat as being domesticated and living with humans, as recorded in Egyptian history. That actually came much later that's much later than this settlement in Cyprus. The bones of the cat are intact and there is no evidence of the cat having been hunted and killed. People used to be buried with their "wealth" and items that they held close. Anyway, that's another story for another blog. I've shot loads of pictures, need to dig them out too.

Let's see. Where were we? Oh yeah, I'm still in the "archaeology mood" and I just remembered another trip done around the same period. That was an inadvertent trip, afforded to me due to a technical glitch in the Airplane that I was flying (as pilot). I got stranded in Ahmedabad, a city in the Western State of India for a couple of days. This was a ferry flight and no one was really inconvenienced, matter of fact this trip ranks among my most favorite ones and became a part of my cherished memory.

I had been somewhat familiar with the so-called Indus Valley civilization (which now is a misnomer since the Saraswathi river had hundreds more civilized settlement 4,500 years ago than the Indus Valley). So, some drive away from Ahmedabad I stumbled into, what I would call, a spectacular site of ruins of the ancient city of Lothal. It took some doing to get there since most taxi operators in Ahmedabad, sadly, were not even aware of this place. Lothal was a rich "inland" port, a unique place of commerce and civilization around 2400 B.C.E. I know this "Inland port" statement of mine may have evoked some curiosity, that's got to wait till I write about it or one can find out about that on the net of course. I shot loads of pictures here too and I promise that's going to be a part of another blog.

Maybe I should write about the time that I fell into the river accidentally and broke my finger in Udawalawe National Park in Sri Lanka while ogling at Elephant herds, grounding me and the plane for some time. I remember the 6 hour ride back to Colombo for medical attention, multiple fractures that too. That incident gave me the opportunity of going uphill to Kandy to see the Buddha's relic (Temple of the Tooth) and to wander around some parts of Sri Lanka, a country I have visited many times.

Or maybe I should write about the trip to Guatemala with the threat of banditos lurking around in the hills or maybe about that beautiful walk I took, around a crater lake (caused by a Meteor, eons ago) in Central Grenada surrounded by total silence and nutmeg trees, not necessarily in that order! The silence is only broken by sounds of birds in the trees and the crunching of nutmeg shells strewn on the ground crackling under my foot. That's another experience I can never forget. You'll find the tiny Island of Grenada in the West Indies, just north of Trinidad and Tobago - cricket fans would know this place.

I promise to write about all of the above. How about the fabulous years I spent in the Maldives flying around the beautiful Islands until the Tsunami hit us?....and the time we saw hundreds of Dolphins and I mean hundreds. So many Dolphins that actually caused a flotilla of sea taxis to halt in their position mid sea. These sea taxis are called Dhonies in Maldives and thay ply between the Airport Island to the capital city-Island of Male'. The taxi on both sides of the channel actually stopped and waited for the entire herd to pass, taking more than ten minutes. I can never forget that sight, of hundreds of Dolphins going by, some doing spectacular flips and leaps out of the water. I could actually have died of contentment and joy that filled me then, nothing more needed to live for, having seen what I considered quite divine. And I had seen them from so close that I could have reached out and touched one, standing near the sea wall in Male'. What else is there to see on this otherwise strange planet, when one has seen divinity? When I think of that scene, I still get goose bumps.

I didn't die, of course, still sitting here in my tenth floor apartment in Singapore, typing in between taking sips from my depleting glass. Strange things it does, to the mind, this fine single malt going smoothly down my throat. I can go on and on but that would be pointless. Maybe I should not promise to write these stories and maybe you should not take me too seriously and wait for me to write them! Who knows when that will happen? Cheers! Hic...