Time is a relative concept

and nothing brings that home more than realizing your ship is on a different time zone to the port it’s currently in…

So we’re currently in Visakh port on the eastern coast of India, getting some last little bits of bureaucracy out of the way and picking up three Indian scientists as new shipmates – welcome aboard!

India is GMT+5.5 so it’s currently about 1.30 pm, but here on the JR we started the expedition on Singapore time (GMT+8) and for convenience we haven’t shifted timezone as we’ve traveled west towards India. So…. here it’s actually already 4 pm.

So to make that super clear: on the JR: 4 pm; one single step off the JR: two and a half hours earlier.

You can imagine this is making arranging meetings with the Indian officials onshore lots of fun 🙂

Visakh isn’t the most picturesque of towns (well what port is, apart from Falmouth of course…) but it is nice to look outside the window and see trees and birds for a change, even if we’re not allowed off to explore exotic India itself. As a bird-nerd I especially enjoyed looking at the egrets, kingfishers, and bee-eaters flitting around in the scrub next to the ship.

Indulge me:

                

    

Phwoar!

[Also, I don’t know why they are all looking to the right. Maybe there was something interesting over there?]

Off to our next sites tomorrow morning hopefully. More updates and “meet the scientists” coming up…