The swampy Elephant Beach

We were immersed in deep conversation with Adi on several things including the island life. At around 1.30, we headed for lunch at Cafe Del Mar, a restaurant that's part of the Barefoot resort in Village 3/ 5. It's cool. Laid back like everywhere else. You get Tiger and Frosters and a whole range of seafood. I ate and slept on the bench where I was eating. It was nice to do that. Felt life was really simple. I don't know how long I snoozed amidst other backpackers engaged in random conversation. Pradeep was writing on borrowed paper. After my siesta, we decided to go to the Elephant Beach on the way to the Radha Beach (Village 7), which turned out to be a totally unexpected, down-to-earth (literally) experience.

If you want to find signs to Elephant Beach, you'll never find one. You have ask and go - like everywhere else on the island. You take a right somewhere along the way to the Radha beach. The only indication is you might see a couple of scooters parked. We saw two paths - one to the left and another to the right. Wondering which one led to the elephant beach, we decided to take the one on the left which seemed more trodden. The path took us deep into the rain forest. It's green, bright and dark intermittently, birds chirping all around, crickets doing their thing, broken branches, animals rustling leaves and hooting. There was a sign from the department of forests that said, "Don't play with nature." They seemed right - when I played the fool with Pradeep, ants bit me? (where did they come from?)

The entrance to elephant beach appears like some place in outer space! It's dark grey sand and slush all around. Grasshoppers (or were they sandhoppers?) and several insect swarm the place. Dried trees show shamelessly display their bottoms. If you close your eyes and then open them - you'd feel you've landed on some martian moon! It's absolutely quiet except for the gentle gushing of the sea in the background, some birds and crickets chirping and bugs and insects quickly making their way through your feet. Wherever there were small puddles of water (really small), there would

We walked through the greyish-brown slush to find the beach. Were we on earth? I mean the whole place seemed so, so fragile that I felt compelled to throw back the sea shell that I picked up for keeps. Quiet. Tranquil. Very calm. Everything doing its thing. Nothing interfered with anything. Everything had its place and seemed to be there for some unknown reason but it seemed important that it was there. There was a tree - uprooted, whitewashed by the water. There was a dog that seemed interested in my Kindle. There were these little white spiders that popped up from burrows in the sand. They seemed really busy coming out, going in, coming out again. The water was lukewarm, salty, full of pebbles, shells and calm. It was nice.