Even as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads the celebrations of the 11th International Day of Yoga 2025 at the RK Beach in Visakhapatnam, as the sun rises above the waters of the Bay of Bengal in all its splendour, the day was heralded by two 63-year-old alumni of the National Defence Academy who are also classmates from Sainik School Korukonda - Col Kolsani Srinivas (retd) and Capt CDNV Prasad, both retired officers of the Indian Navy, onboard their 34= -feet-long boat named Tystie sailing near the International Dateline in the Pacific, 18,000 km to the west in the Baltic,

Capt Tata Sridhar would be leading his crew at the Yoga Day celebrations onboard the soon to be Commissioned INS Tamal at Kaliningrad.

Andhra Pradesh Chief MInister Chandrababu Naidu, who holds blue economy and marine tourism close to his heart, would no doubt be pleased at this coincidence of Telugus immersed in yoga in nautical environs even as over 20 million people gather across the state in a collective celebration of health, unity and spiritual enlightenment through yoga.   

Despite the constraints of limited space on deck, strenuous four hourly  watchkeeping shifts, the constant motions of rolling pitching and yawing, winds and sea spray from the oceanic weather, the officers found time to indulge in yoga and would perhaps have been the first Indians to celebrate this Yoga Day as they are in a time zone 12 hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). 

 Located 14 degrees (840 Nautical Miles or 1450 Km) south of the equator in Longitude 170 East, they would be experiencing the Winter Solstice while we in the Northern Hemisphere would by contrast have the longest day and shortest night today on account of the Summer Solstice. 

The 26-year-old Tystie is on passage from New Zealand to India via Fiji and the next port of call is Noro in the Solomon Islands.

The oceans, comprising 70 percent of the surface of planet earth, are  a medium of connecting peoples across the world, rather than at times mistakenly being viewed as great natural barriers. Nothing proves this more emphatically than the tiny Tystie's passage across the Indo-Pacific which is aptly relevant to this year's theme for the International Day of Yoga - 'Yoga for One Earth One Health'.