Travel Diary: The Andaman Trip

Disclaimer: Unlike other blogposts of mine, I am going to keep this one really short without getting too much in to the background stories. Unfortunately, I don't have a number on the budget this time as this trip was arranged via tours and travel agency, and sponsored by parents :)

Total Duration: 7 days (12th - 18th January 2020)

Places Covered: Port Blair, Ross Island, North Bay Island, Neil Island, Havelock Island

I took a 12:10 am flight to Bangalore and a flight to Port Blair from there at around 4 am (yeah, tell me about it :P). I was travelling with the Patil family and my parents reached after 2-3 hours of us reaching our hotel in Port Blair - The North Reef. The hotel had no wifi (which is pretty normal in Andaman) and even data wasn't working (also normal in Andaman). Connectivity was reduced to almost zero!!

On the way to Cellular Jail

The first 'thing to see' in the itinerary was the Cellular Jail (aka Kala Pani) which was constructed in 1906 at a the then cost of Rs. 5 lakhs had 698 cells. The Jail had 7 wings out of which 4 were destroyed during the WW2 by the Japanese. The most famous prisoner of this jail was Veer Savarkar whose cell is is a big attraction here. Read more about the jail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_Jail.

3 prisoners could be hanged at a time

One of the most famous parts of the jail

one of the punishments meted out to the freedom fighters

Freedom fighters had to wear this jute dress before being punished

Not enough words to describe this

A model of the jail

The cell in itself wasn't too small but suffocating nevertheless

Once we had had the tour of the jail, we attended a light and sound show at the jail itself, which in my opinion could have been much much better. Then we drove to Corbyn's Cove which was too crowded so we went back to the hotel and called it a day.

We woke up a bit early the next morning and headed to Water Sports Complex after a quick breakfast. We were supposed to go to Ross island (Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose island) by a boat but all the boats were stopped for a brief period of time by the Boat Management Board due to powerful waves.

Once we reached the island, we immediately saw a Japanese bunker and a bunch of deers roaming casually and gorging on the coconuts offered by the tourists. We took a buggy which gave us a tour of the whole island. My recommendation - walk on your own.

the island has ruins of some old buildings

After a couple of hours, using the same boat, we headed to the over hyped North Bay Coral Island (features on the old 20 rupee note, if I remember correctly) which has a special fat boat for waching dolphins, a glass boat to see corals, scuba diving, snorkelling, parasailing, etc. We did snorkelling and glass boat to see corals. My recommendation - if you are heading to Neil island and Havelock island, don't do any water sports at North Bay Coral Island.

glass bottom boat

I had fun while returning from the island as I got a chance to steer the boat which is most certainly not as easy as it looks.

Last thing for the day was a visit to the Samudrika museum which gives a glimpse of the flora, fauna, and the tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands.

This was pretty much the entire 2nd day.

On the next morning, we took a ferry (Markruzz) from Port Blair to Neil island via Havelock island.

Port

Inside Markruzz

The moment we arrived at Neil, the breathtaking light blue water was a sight I had never seen before.

We were putting up at the Holiday Inn on the Neil island. After dumping our luggage (and deciding to swim in the hotel's pool at night), we headed to the Laxmanpur Beach 2 which is famous for its rock/coral formation overhead bridge. It is a bit of a rocky place which is difficult to walk on but the little puddles present here and there had umpteen life forms of fishes, small octopus, sea cucumber, etc. It was so interesting to see a puddle smaller than the palm of hand, housing more life form that probably exists on any other planet in our solar system. Unbelievable!!

We were pretty tired after this but the tour guys had scheduled a sunset watch at the Laxmanpur Beach 1. Although we couldn't see the sunset as it got hidden by the clouds but there were umpteen dead corals of multiple colors and shapes lying around on beach. We collected as many and unique ones we could and headed back to the car. The driver informed us that there is a very high probability that the airport authorities will not allow us to take them with us even though they are dead. So threw most of them away. Fact time = a 1 bigha land (not sure how big that is) costs about 40-50 lakh INR on Neil island and can be used to grow coconuts and betel nuts. Another fun fact, the islands have some weird ritual of not drinking much. Yeah, so they have dry days every now and then for logic known only to them. Yeah, don't ask me :P

We reached the hotel and I felt like having some fish. Lo and behold! I was presented with 2 beautiful red snappers to choose from. Now I know why those Masterchef contestants have twinkling eyes whenever the see fresh 'produce' and 'protein'.

Beautiful

Delicious

The next day, our ride to Havelock island was scheduled in the afternoon with Markruzz again. So we headed to Bharatpur beach for a glass boat ride once more which turned out to be much better as compared to what we experienced earlier.

On the beach

After the ride got over, we relaxed a bit and headed to Havelock by the jetty, and the hotel that we were going to stay at for the next 2 days was Haywizz.

Markruzz

We upgraded ourselves to deluxe rooms which had indoor pool and a direct access to the main pool. Man, sometimes I really question my own belief that money can't buy happiness.

Anyway, we had decided that we would go for the night kayaking tour to experience bio-luminescence but unfortunately, due to a low tide we had to cancel our plan. We went to the Radhanagar beach which is extremely clean and happen's to be Asia's 5th best beach (not really sure why).

And this ended one more day on the island.

The next day was going to be the highlight of the trip as it wassssss the Scuba Day. So we woke up really early and headed to Gypsy Divers at the Nemo Beach. We learnt all the basic signs and principles and after practicing for a while in a shallow area, we headed for the deep end. Although I had already done scuba once, I was facing slight difficult in crossing the first 5 meters since there was no visibility at all. After 2 attempts I finally went in and minutes just passed by.

Once you really get comfortable in the water, it is really difficult to come out. I mean, why would you want to? The peace, the oneness with your breath, being literally in the moment is something only regular practitioners of meditation witness in the real world. For the normal junta, this is surreal.

Unfortunately, it was time to come up and so we did. And yes, we desperately needed Farhan Akhtar' poetry on our way back to the beach (no, nobody was crying)

We walked back to the hotel and had our brekafast. We googed, yes! We decided to go to Elephant beach after some time but the condition was that we would have to spend 3 hours there at the beach since jetty wouldn't be available. Now what the hell does one do on a beach (which doesn't have elephants by the way) in the afternoon when the sun is at its peak. So we skipped that, had some ice cream, came back to the hotel, and swam in the damn pool. Man, life!!!!

In the evening (pretty much night time), we went for night kayaking to check out bioluminiscence at some really lonesome and scary bends of the beach in between the mangroves. Well, to be honest I had higher expectations from the luminiscence (thanks to google) but it was nothing like it. Nevertheless, i was amazed at the whole concept and beauty of nature. Kayaking was definitely fun though.

Glowing bands

We went to Kalapatthar beach the next day and spent some time there (mostly clicking photos). Well, our trip was pretty much coming to an end as we took a jetty now to Port Blair again.