Round off the main channel, and the sea truly opens

Boarding the boat at Labuan Bajo, a boatload of people who had never met, the engine droning steadily, the sea wind carrying salt and diesel. The sea turns, bit by bit, from the murk of the harbour into a deeper, cleaner blue. Komodo National Park is not a single point but a stretch of sea scattered with islands — Komodo, Rinca, Padar — each to be rounded before it can be reached.

This stretch of sea was made a national park because here live the Komodo dragons — the largest lizards alive in the world, found only on these few islands anywhere on earth. They have lived here who knows how many tens of thousands of years, belonging to this sea earlier than any tourist, any boat. The park exists less to let people come and see them than to keep this sea, on their behalf.

To see the dragons one walks led by a ranger, keeping one's distance. That distance is not a restriction but the very reason this place is precious: the dragon is wild, it does not exist for you. The ranger lowers his voice and has us stop; ahead a dragon is slowly crossing the path, its tongue flicking in and out, paying this group of people no mind at all. We stood unmoving, not daring even to press the shutter too loudly.

In the afternoon, climbing to the heights of Padar Island, three bays open out below, the colour of the pink beach coming from the crumbs of a red coral. This group, strangers still that morning, were halfway up already passing water to one another, reaching out a hand to pull each other along; at the summit all fell quiet, sitting shoulder to shoulder watching those three curves, no one in a hurry to take photos, the sea wind drying the sweat bit by bit.

The sea's blue is layered: near at hand clear enough to see the reef below, far off settling to near-black. An eagle wheels overhead, its shadow skimming the beach; but for the wind and the waves, there is almost no other sound. Sitting long at the summit, one finds that within this sea's quiet there is a weight — it is not beautiful to please anyone; it was simply always here, beautiful a very, very long time.

All of this lies off the main shipping lane, taking half a day more, a longer way round — and I think you too will understand as we did: a detour is never getting lost, it is what lets a whole sea finally open to you, after you have been willing to go a little further. On the boat back, everyone sunburnt red, yet talking more; that sea, seen only after half a day's rounding, seemed to have quietly joined this boatload of strangers together.