I get to the outskirts of the beach where I can stand up and take a moment to look at the island. It truly is a paradise. This is the type of island you see in the cartoons, one shipwrecked sailor writing his message putting it into a bottle and praying on the tides to deliver his salvation. I sneak a look behind me making sure that the boat is still there. On board I can see some of the others diving in, swimming around the boat or heading out to join me here. But for the moment I want this to be my island! I want it to myself. This is not an opportunity that comes knocking everyday so I walk onto the beautifully sandy shore, the soft grains sifting through my toes. The sand is warm but not hot and feels therapeutic under my bare feet. I am alone here. It feels good. I look around at the vastness of the ocean in every direction. I can see a couple of other islands in the distance, but the solitude here is complete. It feels good and I sit on the shore for a couple of minutes, facing away from the boat and gaze into the vast beyond.

I love being with people, I am a very sociable person, but every now and again it is good to be with my thoughts and myself. Right now I am completely by myself, I could be on one of those pinpricks of light in the sky that I saw back in Moni at the base of the volcano. I could be anywhere and this feeling of solitude is good. There have been times in my travels where I have had a special feeling: Standing on the Great Wall of China, no one else in sight. Gazing up at Table Mountain at dawn. Diving in the Philippines with beautifully coloured and shaped coral, amazing varieties of fish of all shapes and sizes all around me. Being taken into the modest home of an old Vietnamese man and served tea whilst he smiles at me and without spoken language begs me to drink with him, out of the window the brown shimmer of the Mekong Delta ambling slowly by. Moments of wholeness, appreciation, satisfaction, times when I can reflect on how lucky I am to be. This is one of those moments and I revel in it. How I came to be here, all those amazing coincidences, the choices, the times when my hand has been forced to take a route I wouldn’t normally have considered. All that has conspired to make me be here at this perfect moment.

There have been times in my travels where I have had a special feeling...

I am brought out of my revelry by two of my new friends coming out of the water a quarter of the way round the island. I decide to walk around the beach; it only takes me about fifteen minutes to slowly amble round the entire island, but on the way, on this tiny desert island there is much to take in. The gentle waves washing up the perfect beach. The vast open sea glistening and glinting in the hot sun. The crabs scuttling to and from the ocean, busy on who knows what mission? To examine the intricate designs of a beautiful, tropical shell, some in perfect condition, shiny and new; striped, spotted, mottled, plain, colourful, some old and beaten into patterns and shapes by the relentless waves. The only thing that I don’t see here is any sign of man, no litter, no construction, no noise, just the sound of the sea and the gentle breeze blowing in the palm trees.

I meet up with some of the others and compare our perceptions of the island. We talk for a while and, having had the island as my own for a time I am now content to share it, to enjoy it in company. We sit together for a while, sometimes in animated conversation, sometimes in silence. After a while it is time to go back to the boat. I snorkel my way back and get on board happy that I have had this chance, watching my island disappear below the horizon as we move on to another place and another new experience. I know I will never forget the tranquillity I have felt today, the beauty of a tiny dot of land, unmarked on most maps, so far from anywhere or anything in the normal world. But for me it was massive, a whole world to itself, a universe inside me. I know that I will never return to this island, but also I know that the feelings I’ve had here will remain inside me always and maybe in that way I will return, whenever I want, my personal paradise inside me.

Again we get typical and tasty Indonesian food for dinner and afterwards a few drinks and travel anecdotes are shared in time-honoured backpacking tradition. The sleeping jigsaw puzzle is built on deck once again and the gentle sway of the boat and the lapping of the sea against the hull lull us to our own dreams of exotic and far away lands that for once are not so far away!

Everyone is up and about not long after sunrise and a typical breakfast of banana and chocolate pancakes greet out eager stomachs. Today is mainly sailing and it is nice to relax and watch the world go by. In the evening we moor up next to an island overgrown by mangroves. It is quiet and peaceful. This is Bat Island and we are waiting for dusk to come. We know that in the twilight, the flying foxes will start their nightly migration to nearby islands where they will feast until dawn.

As a child, our house, 30 or so miles from London backed on to a large field with a river running through it. Here bats were a common occurrence. Just open the curtains on a summer’s night and they could be seen. Quick and agile shadows swooping and swerving in search of invisible prey. These little critters back home were small however and having been tempted (or at least so the vendor thought!) with a live flying fox up in Sumatra – a delicacy in these parts - I know that these are huge beasts. These are the bats that nightmares are born of, that could pick you up whole and drag you off kicking and screaming to their hellish lair. Okay, so I exaggerate a little but they are nevertheless known as flying foxes for a reason.

...bats that nightmares are born of, that could pick you up whole and drag you off...

While we wait the sun sinks into the ocean sending up a blaze of purples, of reds and of oranges in its wake. Our eyes turn to the island once more: it remains still and silent until all of a sudden a shape materialises over the mangroves. Those unmistakable arcing wings and the fat long body silhouette against the orange sky as silently it flaps its way straight above us and across the still water to its feeding grounds. The wingspan must be 1.5 metres across and its length a good 50cms. Up close they do resemble foxes, large shining eyes, with, unlike other bats, excellent vision. They can nest in ‘camps’ of up to 1 million individuals and often need to ‘crash land’ in order to hook themselves to a tree, a technique that can cause massive, screaming brawls between all the other residents

As the first of the night turns into a distant speck, so another appears in the sky above us. Then another and another, now several at once. The evening light starts to fade but this is as much from the now multitudinous bats as from the setting sun. There are hundreds, even thousands of them in the air. They form a dark, thick moving band in the sky as they fly over us and head off into the darkness of the horizon. All fly in the same direction, a perfectly straight line to an unseen island, night after night they make the journey, only to return every morning to roost in the safety of the thick mangrove trees.

They return too early for us the next morning and by the time we awake they are all safely back asleep themselves having given our boat a noiseless fly past in the dawn.

Our next island is Rinca, one of only 3 islands in the world that are home to the mighty Komodo Dragons. The other two islands are Flores, where they are hardly ever seen and, not surprisingly, Komodo Island. We have a reasonable chance of seeing them on Rinca today, but if not Komodo is a certainty and we will probably get much closer too.

The island is very hilly and we go ashore to find long dry grass and scattered palm trees interspersed with thickets of woodland. There are more stilt houses here and we walk up to a small village that is centred on a small grassy square.

The only things missing are a pair of wings and a puff of smoke from its snout.

As we round the corner of one of the houses we stop in our tracks. There is a Komodo dragon there, about a metre and a half long sitting on the grass. The dragon looks round at us and then takes off. For an animal this size I am amazed at its turn of pace, they have been recorded sprinting at up to 26kmh! Up on its hind legs and looking so ungainly it sprints off up the hill away from us, much to the relief of some of the group. I can see why they are called dragons: scaly skin, a long snout and a long low body with a tail doubling its length. The only things missing are a pair of wings and a puff of smoke from its snout. The speed it runs too makes it seem like it is flying, front legs high and the tail straight out behind, just the pumping legs give away the fact that this creature is not getting anywhere above terra firma.

We continue our walk around the island seeing the contrast between the lush, bright green of the palm trees and the sparkling azure of the ocean, flat and silent stretching off to infinity. Coming back round to where our boat is waiting for us we spot a strange sight to our right. It appears to be moving and shimmering by itself, it is big, maybe 2 metres high and one across. It seems at first glance to be part of the rock but the colouring is wrong. A yellow orange shimmer moving up and down. We cautiously move closer and work out that it is a swarm of bees clinging to the rock face. There must be a hundred thousand bees there, huddled round and protecting their queen. I have to say she is very safe from us – when we realise what we are looking at we move slowly away and carry on our hike.

Back on board we set out from the bay and looking over the side someone spots something flip out of the water. Then another a couple of metres away. They are not far away and as they come even closer we can make out two huge flat black shapes in the clear water. We identify them as Manta Rays, probably 3 metres across, a huge diamond moving just below the surface. Their size is incredible and their movements so calm and relaxed. Massive triangular wings flapping gently, the tips poking above the surface as they fly in their watery sky to places unknown. They fly alongside the boat for a while and as we reach deeper water they descend lower and out of sight into the depths. Maybe someday I will be lucky enough to see these beautiful creatures up close when I enter their world on a diving trip.

After a couple of hours sailing as we head toward the end of another day, we see in front of us, far in the distance a perfectly conical volcano. From the top of the volcano smoke pours out as if from a chimney. The sun is low above the horizon just to the right of the volcano, falling out of the sky to refill the mighty volcanoes all around us with more fire. We are in one of the most seismically active areas in the world here. Part of the ring of fire, or Pacific Rim which stretches all down the east of Asia and across to South America, to the still forming Andes.

Our captain breaks the spell to tell us that we have to find fuel. We are almost out and cannot get far. This is more than a little worrying; we are at this point miles from anywhere and soon might be at the will of the ocean, not a nice thought in a boat like this. We head to some small islands and slowly sailing between two of them the engine splutters and coughs, it starts again for another minute or so and a couple more stutters later it is silent. We all look to each other as if to find some spark of hope but there is none there. We watch as the captain and two crewmembers come down and get a small boat with an outboard motor into the water. The two crewmembers start it up and disappear into the mangroves to our left. The dense trees quickly silence the noise of the small motor and once more silence is restored.

...it will, as often is the case when something goes wrong, make a good story someday!

Twenty minutes later the boat returns and the captain and crew exchange words, between us our Indonesian probably amounts to 20 words so we have no idea what they are saying. We don’t however need a translation; it is obvious that no fuel has been found. The captain points in another direction and the boat goes off, now into the twilight that is rapidly falling all around us. Soon it is completely dark and we can see that the rest of the crew is preparing dinner. At least we will be able to eat.

Sometime later we hear the buzz of the outboard and the boat approaches out of the darkness. We are in luck they have found fuel, three jerry cans full. At least that will get us somewhere! We eat our dinner and discuss the efficiency and planning of the Indonesians. To be honest, none of us are really surprised about the

evening’s events, it is what you come to expect and we know now that it will, as often is the case when something goes wrong, make a good story someday!