Plunging In

Testing the Waters
Che went in first, slicing through the aquamarine waters with a taut, streamlined elegance. A stark contrast with the knots in my stomach - and in my brow, weighed down by 15 kilos of diving equipment…and the dark dread of unfathomable depths…
BCD? Check
Weights? Check.
Releases? Check.
Air? Check.
Final OK?….uhhhh… Lubricated by the terror oozing out of my pores, I sidled down the side of my boat with all the grace of a collapsing iceberg. The sea lapped me up hungrily and flipped me over a few times, forcing me into an abject, umbilical posture of submission.
I suppose my unconditional capitulation was accepted – sanity eventually surfaced and I found myself floating, none the worse for wear, in the middle of the Sulu Sea. A silent prayer of gratitude was sent up to the genius behind such brilliant mnemonics as “British Women Really Are Fun” and “Bruce Willis Ruins All Films”, standing for Buoyancy Control Device (BCD), Weights, Releases, Air and Final OK – PADI’s 5 point pre-dive checklist.

Surfing to Sipadan
The Professional Association of Diving Instructors or PADI is the biggest name in recreational diving, and runs a huge network dive shops around the world. PADI’s Open Water Dive program, lasting between 3 and 5 days, is the most popular launching pad for adventures in diving and seemed to be just the thing for my upcoming vacation. After days of surfing through the infinite list of options on PADI’s website, I found myself heading for Sipadan, a tiny island off the coast of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo that claimed to offer among the finest diving in Asia.

Divers are not allowed to stay overnight in Sipadan and must base themselves either at one of the surrounding islands or at Semporna on mainland Sabah. Semporna, presumably a corruption of the Sanskrit word “Sampurna”, is a bustling fishing town that moonlights as a somewhat reluctant host to the flock of dive-pilgrims and sun-worshippers that homes in every tourist season. A sultry air hangs hot and heavy over its eternal summer, prodded unhurriedly along by the muezzin’s lackadaisical calls and the daily hullabaloo at the fish-market. The Semporna Mosque, an unremarkable structure shouldering a gaudy gold dome, is the town’s sole tourist attraction and the focal point of rows of stilted hamlets that reach out, in search of a livelihood, towards the bountiful sea.

Padding Up
Semporna’s paucity of talking points was probably just as well given the sweat and toil that PADI had in store for me. My welcome drink was inconsiderately substituted by the fat, intimidating tome that was PADI’s course material. I labored through its dreary pages with a long face, eliciting a welcome suggestion that I try the video instead. A troupe of bulging biceps and surfboard stomachs bounded onto the screen, proceeding to tackle a series of potential catastrophes with unflappable smugness…But one of the divers falls apart from his group, his oxygen running out quickly. The currents are getting insistent now, tugging hard at his tired limbs…and the blue deep eventually drags its hapless prey into an infinite, timeless void….

Che broke into my unsanctioned siesta with a sheet full of bathymetric brainteasers…I wasn’t quite prepared for a MENSA test on a diving vacation but did my best to navigate the maze of tables and charts he’d spread around me…It was to take him many exasperating hours before my torpid intellect could meaningfully respond to PADI’s daunting challenge.
Che is a cheerful South African backpacker who’s drifted in from the cold currents around Cape Town to join the many footloose souls engaged in an extended diving orgy at Scuba Junkie, one of Semporna’s leading dive operators. The atmosphere at the dive shop is a very social one, with a Babel of tongues and accents, cut loose by a sparkling array of spirits, transporting the little shack into a dreamy, techno trance, many worlds away from sleepy Semporna…

I went into my underwater training session the next day, tormented by a ringing headache. The key to effortless scuba diving is “neutral buoyancy”, jargon for being able to pivot up and down on one’s fins using only the breath to control movement. It looked straightforward enough when Che demonstrated his see-saw act, hands clasped across the chest, pulling back into a clock-wise direction inches before hitting the sea-bed…but my performance turned out to be rather more spectacular – a deep breath would send me shooting towards the surface and if I exhaled in an attempt to tame my flailing flight, I’d be dispatched in the opposite direction, like a punctured balloon, to a thorny reception of sea urchins. Che drank deep from his bottomless well of patience to impose some restraint on my ungainly underwater acrobatics although I never quite managed to replicate his perfect pendulum-like swing. In the end, however, my little routine was deemed worthy of PADI’s approval and I wasn’t going to fret about the elegance with which the result was achieved.

Atlantis
My newly procured certificate was duly invoked to book myself on the next available voyage to Sipadan. I headed out to the island with the languid sun, ushered in by a balmy breeze, settling heavily on my eyelids. The serene, turquoise waters seemed to rise oddly, in thin reedy stands fanning out into a darker green…Just as I began assessing the state of my consciousness, Che bombed into the sea, working up a wall of water that crashed down on me in a wet and salty assurance of reality - Sipadan’s shaggy mop of coconut trees peeped out of the horizon - it was time to gear up. British Women/Bruce Willis – take your pick…I’d never been very fond of Bruce Willis.
We went down on our amphibious quest, holding our BCD hoses above our heads in a reverential salute to our irascible host, earning ourselves a soft landing on its alien soil. My anxieties dissolved rapidly, in an ocean of stupefied wonder…in the celestial shoals of color that flitted past, darted across, hovered above, lurked beneath…in that hallucinatory expanse of refracted light and refractory senses...
The dive-masters would diligently rattle their oxygen tanks upon every manifestation of the Lord’s liquid imagination - the Lion Fish and his iridescent mane, smoldering inside a marine cave; Eagle Rays striking out of their sandy bed; Reef Sharks dozing on the sea bed, utterly unmindful of the damage to their reputation; Green Turtles ambling up with an outstretched paw…All too soon, however, the pressure gauge signaled the need to ascend. We went up to a depth of 5 metres for the mandatory “safety stop”, recommended for a number of good reasons, one of which is to prevent the lungs from bursting into smithereens as they expand during the ascent!
We hovered there, in suspended animation, beneath a gently shimmering veil that enmeshed the twisted angles of the sun when a rude fish tore into the tranquil fabric with a quick exploratory circle. Satisfied with his reconnaissance, he waved in his waiting comrades, thousands and thousands of them, to form a frenzied, black whorl around us, spinning my benumbed, disbelieving senses into a dizzy climax.

Unremarkable
Barracudas, Che tells me when are back on the boat – the explanation doing nothing to alleviate my delirious ecstasy. We chatter on, towards the Semporna shore. Its unremarkable mosque and unremarkable stilt villages gradually emerge from the setting sun. As does the unremarkable fish market, housing the stinking, bloody piles of the day’s catch…from that, oh-so-remarkable world, a few feet below…

FACTFILE
PADI Dive Certification can be obtained from hundreds of Dive Centres across the world including several sites in India and South East Asia. Check out http://www.padi.com/. Expect to pay about USD3-400 for the course including equipment. Shorter introductory diving courses are also available.

You should be able to swim continuously for 200 metres and float for 10 minutes in order to get a PADI Open Water License – no other prior experience or knowledge is necessary.
Scuba Junkie (www.scuba-junkie.com) and North Borneo Dive and Sea Sports (www.northborneo.net) are the two main dive operators in Semporna. Dives to Sipadan can also be booked through several dive operators in Kota Kinabalu. Visit www.sabahtourism.com

Semporna can be reached via Tawau which has connections to Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu. Tickets can be booked online through an international credit card at http://www.airasia.com/ or www.malaysiaairlines.com.

Staying on the islands around Sipadan (such as Mabul - http://www.sipadan-mabul.com.my/ ) offers a luxurious but expensive alternative to staying at Semporna. Accommodation options in Semporna include the Dragon Inn, built on stilts (50 – 100 USD per night) or in the dorms at Scuba Junkie.

Vegetarians will not go hungry but do not expect anything other than very basic rice and noodles. Make sure your dive operator knows about your dietary restrictions, if any.

Permits for Sipadan need to be booked at least a month in advance. Any licensed PADI dive operator in Semporna or Kota Kinabalu should be able to get it for you.

Ideally at least 24 hours should be allowed before flying out after a PADI course. Talk to your dive operator before planning your trip.

The operators mentioned above are reliable but Malaysia is gaining a reputation for credit card frauds. Talk to your bank for advice on suitable precautions.

Visa on arrival is now available to Indians – check with your travel agent for details.