New Years Dive

It was my first new year outside India.  I wanted  it to be crazy. We decided to do the ‘New year dive’ –the dutch tradition of jumping into the icy cold waters of the north sea at New year Jan 1 noon. We signed up for it and went to Zandvoort for it. It did not disappoint us :D.  The day was sunny and the beach was refreshing. There was a tent and a bunch of people standing with orange caps. We too went, registered and got the orange caps. There were about thousand people gathered for the event. We were stunned by the magnitude of it.

I had planned of doing the dive with a bunch of friends and they all arrived. We got ready for the dive-changing into our swimsuits! There were people of all ages- yound kids to old people and also dogs who came for the dive. Half an hr before the dive organizing team cheered us to dance, jump and making us form a Mexican wave. The clock struck and it was time!

People ran like crazy into the waters. Just when I went in I realized I had never exposed myself to such cold waters in my life. It was freezing and I could not feel my legs anymore. We ran back to the sands from the water. It was the case with most of the people. We came back to the starting point and  tried regaining consciousness in our legs. It was crazy.

Just when we were settling down one of us challenged to go in again. We , out of our minds, ran again into the waters. This time, deep and dancing and jumping inside the waters. That was something to remember.

We came back and got dressed. Unox ,the sponsoring company , provided us with free soup. We returned back to the city searching for a cozy café but alas we could not find any. We finally gave up on our search for café and went into a greek restaurant. Ten of us were there and we socialized for sometime. It was a nice beginning to the new year!