Raja Ampat are a group of Indonesian Islands and are considered to have one of the richest coral reefs in the world that is filled with marine life. My husband Vanraj Bajaj is a dive master as he has pulled off a little over 500 dives currently while I am just about to reach my 100th dive. We went on the Gaia Love liveaboard with Orca Dive Club, probably the most beautiful liveaboard that exists, and spent eight days living on the boat along with a group of 16 other divers a lot of whom we dive with on all the liveaboards we go on. Our dive schedule would usually entail waking up at 6 am, diving at 7 am to 8 pm with the break of breakfast, lunch and tea in between.
The food on board the Gaia Love was phenomenal, we had a great mix of continental and local Indonesian food that was made to order. The dive began from Sorong, we spent majority of our time in Misool and then sailed back via Dampier Strait. The marine life is extremely rich and known for their beautiful coral gardens and macro life.
The treasure hunt of searching for these tiny organism, some which are really hard to see without the help of your camera’s macro lense, is filled with excitement and adrenaline. Nudibranchs of all kinds, pygmy seahorses, bobtail squids, orangutan crabs among many others are just a treat to find underwater. This year we had the pleasure of seeing many more things like leaf fish, many Wobbegong sharks, stone fish, crocodile fish, filefish, ghost pipefish and the most amazing beautiful Oceanic Manta Rays encounter which had all of us divers in an underwater daze.
The textures in the corals, the colours and patterns are mesmerising and for a creative person like me, these make me imagine colors and textures and beading patterns which form the base of all my collections. I remember the first few times I was underwater, I would imagine my pieces while I was diving and as soon as my dive was over I would roughly sketch out the idea. By the time my dive trip was over, I was ready with my entire collection.
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 "Kresha Bajaj")
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