Day 7 (11/1/12)

Today we packed and left for the harbor to catch a boat to Gili Trawangan. As usual it was raining, so we were already half wet before we got on the boat. The choppy seas completed the job and drenched us as we journeyed forth to the Gilis. But it wasn’t all bad, the to and fro-ing of the boat was like a lovely lullaby putting us to sleep. By the time we woke up we had arrived at our destination. (By the way, we were listening to the song Lahiri Lahiri Lahiri Lo which was amazingly apt to the place and the sleepy condition we were in! :)) Now before you assume that we slept like some sort of mythical rakshasas, we should probably tell you that the ride was only 20 minutes long.

There is a particular phenomenon that only backpackers encounter while arriving at a new destination. It’s like the entire world is working against you. The taxi guys are behind you, the food guys want you, the hotel guys need you, and the tonga guys simply bug you! And to top it all you are tired and walking around with your 17 kgs of weight on your back. And ofcoures, noting is compete without the rain! The bloody rain!!!! Not the optimal situation in which to make important decisions like where to stay and how much to pay for that place. So like always we ended picking a pretty miserable dump of a place (which of course looked like a palace to us at that particular moment.)

After we’d checked in to our aforementioned palace, we had a chance to check out the island and get some food. Like pretty much every other one of the near 17,000 islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago, Gili Trawangan too is ridiculously beautiful. Pristine blue water, white beaches and of course the always perfect Indonesian sense of aesthetics. Words could only do justice to the impossible beauty of this place, if they were composed by someone like Byron or Keats. So we’ll spare you our attempts and let the pictures talk instead.

The rest of the day was pretty dull because of the rain except for a beautiful encounter. Our only outing was to go out for dinner. After dinner, Vishu decided to go back to the room while I decided to stay a bit longer and enjoy the night. On my way to room, I realized that I had no clue where the room was! I was lost, in the dark, in the rain, with strange looking Indonesian men staring at me fumbling with my torch and dodging big puddles of water! As I was trying to jump over a puddle, I heard a man’s voice behind me. A white man on a cycle had just stopped and was asking if I was lost and if I was ok. We started to talk and it turns out that he (Chris) was a Britsh guy, who had been living on the island for the past 5 months, owns a villa on the island and loves to go on adventurous dives for fun! I was impressed! What an awesome life! He escorted me back to my room safely and he told me that he would be happy to show me around the island the next day. Looks like daddy didn’t simply send me someone to show me the way to our hotel, but a guide to show us the entire island as well! Feeling blessed with that encounter, I went into the room feeling excited about the next couple of days.

Once, back in the room, me and Vishu were exhausted and discussed the diving and snorkeling that we were supposed to go to the next day with utter trepidation. Vishu wasn’t comfortable in the water, so he was a bit nervous and I was thinking of the rain spoiling the dive. And then we fell asleep.