Golden Passage

Golden Passage threads the slim channel separating Gili Lawa Darat from the savannah-gold northeast tip of Komodo Island — the name nods both to the gilded soft corals on the mid-channel saddle and the honeyed light that floods the strait at sunrise. Dived on a rising tide, it’s a classic east-to-west drift: divers launch from a shallow eastern bay and let the flow carry them across coral gardens, bommies and a sandy floor stitched with garden eels. Whitetip and grey reef sharks rest in the lee of boulders, turtles graze the slopes, and sweetlips, snapper schools and passing trevally turn the channel into an underwater highway.