Diving at Netrani Island
My fascination with the ocean began in 2008, snorkeling in the Red Sea during a family trip to Egypt. Something about being suspended in that much water, watching an entire world move beneath the surface, stuck with me, and from then on, scuba diving was something I knew I wanted to try.
That chance came in the summer of 2013, during a family vacation to Cape Town. The water was a world away from the warm coastal waters back home in India, cold enough that diving meant a full wetsuit, vest, gloves, and boots. It was a completely different kind of diving experience, and it only deepened my curiosity to go further.
In 2015, I finally committed to it properly and completed my Open Water certification in Goa, a three-day mix of theory and practical dives. I explored a shipwreck, learned the fundamentals of diving safety, and practiced emergency drills. As luck would have it, I dove during the off-season, so visibility was near zero. It made for a strange, almost disorienting dive, but oddly, that made it just as memorable, if not more, than a picture-perfect one would have been.
In January 2018, I completed my Advanced Open Water certification in Murudeshwar, Karnataka, diving at Netrani Island — a small island roughly 19km off the coast, known for some of the best diving conditions in the region. It felt like a fitting next chapter to a journey that started with a snorkel and mask a decade earlier in Egypt.
Deep Dive at Netrani Island