Ocean's mythic travellers

Each year, India's eastern coastline becomes the destination of an unseen armada: restless ocean wanderers with no maps, only instinct, and the pull of shifting seas. They cross vast distances and arrive on Odisha's shores. They are Olive Ridleys, small, olive-shelled, their heart-shaped carapace carrying a life spent in motion.

Tune into the episode The Olive Ridley Odyssey of the podcast, 'Fantastic Beasts and How to Save Them', hosted by Bangalorean duo Yashaswini and Vinay, and follow how thousands of these creatures emerge from the surf, carving slow signatures into the sand.

This is the arribada - a mass nesting so vast, it blurs biology into myth. Then comes the walk. Under moonlight, they haul themselves forward, flippers dragging, pausing to dig, lay and cover, an entire lifecycle compressed into a single night.


Weeks later, hatchlings race to the sea and disappear into the 'lost decades', drifting unseen across oceans. And, yet, years on, they return - to the very beach where they were born. The males remain absent, solitary at sea, never returning to shore. Beyond nesting though, life is slow - basking, drifting, resting. The ultimate slow life we all crave for.