Andaman 2023

Disclaimer: This blog post contains vivid description of non-vegetarian food.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a group of 500+ (572 on the internet but more than 800 as per local legend 🤷‍♂️) islands of which only 38 are inhabited.

During the British colonial regime, Andaman was used as a penal colony. After the British recaptured the island from Japanese during WWII, the penal colony was demolished. Now, the islands are a popular tourist destination - famous for for their palm-lined, white-sand beaches, mangroves and tropical rainforests. Coral reefs supporting marine life such as sharks and rays make for popular diving and snorkeling sites. Indigenous tribes inhabit the more remote islands, many of which are off limits to visitors.

The economy of the region relies almost entirely on tourism. Fishing and agriculture are the other major economic industries in the area. The tropical weather and vast fertile land provide great oppportunity for coconut, clove and supari (Areca Nut) farming.

For me, embracing the peace and calm is the perfect way to completely disconnect from all the hustle and bustle of city noise.

Food

Good food brings me the utmost satifaction and joy. Add to that, the opportunity to try fresh local cuisines and that's just the cherry on top. By virtue of being on a tropical island, we had access to ample seafood and coconuts!

Each day, we enjoyed a brief reprieve from the afternoon heat by drinking and then devouring the deliciously sweet coconuts the island had to offer. Street vendors would set up stalls along the road to sell fresh coconuts to weary travellers. With several swift chops, the coconuts were ready to drink. After this they were chopped in half so we could enjoy scooping the flesh out with spoons made from coconut husks!

Michal and I are both foodies and go out of our way to engage in experiences that enable us to practice our passion. To an extent where a large motivation and reason for Michal's trip to India is solely to try a variety of Indian and Gujarati dishes. For this purpose, I've already prepared a list of local and national delicacies to expose him to and places to visit once we are back in Gujarat.

We stayed at three different islands during the week and at all accomodations, our breakfast and dinner was included as buffet-style meals in the stay package. While the quality of service and choice of dishes varied vastly between accomodations, we were extremely happy with the quality and quantity of the food.

On the day of Diwali, we had an elevated experience at Sea Shell resort in Havelock. We dressed up in traditional clothes and visited the restaurant. Upon getting there, we were overwhelmed by the large selection of delicacies including Diwali sweets such as "gajar halwa" (made from carrots) and "gulab jamun". It was also Michal's birthday so to compliment the diwali festivities, I also arranged a small surprise. As we finished enjoying a delicious buffet dinner, the servers brought a few delicious pastries to our table with candles and we sang the birthday song and took some photos 🎂

Usually chicki-tarians (one who loves to eat chicken), in Andaman, we used the opportunity to try as much freeh seafood as possible! Wherever available, we would order a full fish fry to share alongside some other dishes. For most lunches, we would head to a beach shack and the waiter would present in front of us, a choice of fresh fish caught on the day. After asking them about the weight and type of fish, we would usually order the fish that is most popular amongst the locals which is largely a representation of what is most abundantly found in the water nearby. I enjoyed discussing the preparation of the fish and collaborating with the waiter over what sort of spice levels and flavour profiles to use. Almost everytime, the only remaining evidence of a fish ever being there would be a bare skeleton with no meat on it. This was one of my favourite aspects of the trip.

Conversations

Conversations are another big pillar of my travel diaries. Having already been in India for a few weeks, I hadn't got the opportunity to keep in touch with Michal as much as we usually do. So, when we met at Delhi Airport, we spent the first few hours catching up on the previous 3 weeks of gossip - work trips, gym schedules, the plan for India trip etc. Obviously, few hours were only enough to scratch the surface and there were many conversations that followed in the next two weeks but soon enough, Yash joined us at the airport.

From the start, Yash and Michal got along well. As a matter of fact, they had more conversations with each other than I did with either of them. To my relief, Yash took the responsiblity of the translator to enable Michal to talk with locals in Andaman. As a special shoutout, this included a guided tour as well as a light and sound show (!!) of the Cellular Jail. This set the tone for a large number of conversations over the next week. One obvious yet interesting umbrella topic was "How do you think India is different from Australia?" Soon enough, various tangents including but not limited to - safety, mobile reception, land sizes, agriculture and meat production, population density, education, job and business prospects - were all exhuasted and other topics were piqued their interest. A common trait amongst most of my friends - especially Yash and Michal - is the eagerness to learn more. This meant that they shared their knowledge of pilots licenses, amateur radios, technical challenges with video playback and many other nerdy topics 😛. Over one week of eating and drinking coconut, we almost finished a PhD in it's usefulness - fruit, water, oil, milk, rope.

Somewhat funnily, we kept bumping into a man and his son over and over during our trip. Turns out, they had booked the same tour as us, albeit with a one day offset! Over a few "surprising" coincidences, we talked to him about UPSC exam - Examination for recruitment to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and other Central Services. Another such coincidence was with a young boy from the west of India, who was curious about Michal's "accent" (for a lack of better words to describe his curiosity). With him, Michal discussed the subjects of computer science in Indian education, internet celebrities promoting body building et al.

Experiences

Having booked our tickets individually, we all had different seat numbers for the flight from Delhi to Port Blair. We requested the folks at the boarding gate to check if they can sit us together and to our pleasant surprise, Michal and I got upgraded to Business Class. For what it's worth, the domestic business class experience was not as good as we expected but for a free upgrade and extra leg room, I am not complaining.

In Ross Island (now called Netaji Subhashchnadra Bose Island), we saw an extraordinary amount of deers, literally from the moment we got off our ferry! The deers crowded around coconut stalls for leftover coconut cream and for the first few minutes, it was kind-of scary! While most of the ex-Japanese colony was covered in picturesque remains of historic buildings, one unfortunate (and somewhat funny) random occurence was that of a life-sized plastic kangaroo, in the trash!

In North Island, kayaking next to Mt Harriet Peak (renamed Mt Manipur peak) was the most peaceful experience. Mt Harriet is the third tallest peak in Andaman and Nicobar islands and it perfectly complimented the corals that we could clearly see through the pristine water.

Havelock

Next, we visited Havelock Island, where we stayed for a couple of nights. We stayed in an exotic resort with lots of greenery, private beach access, swimming pool and spa and multiple restaurants. Only 16000 locals live on the island but there maybe at least as many tourists at any time.

One evening, we walked over to a nearby wine shop in romantic monsoon rain. While drinking wine, we watched Nat Geo and had deep and meaningful conversations about animals, most of which I cannot recall at the time of writin this 🍷😪

Havelock is also home to Radha Nagar Beach (one of the most beautiful beaches in the world). The drive to Radha Nagar, from our resort, was 13 kms of pure serenity with tall green trees on both sides. Over at Radha Nagar beach, I took some time for myself to swim to the end of the beach and take in the greenery on one side and the clear waters on the other. After an hour long swim, we got out of the water to have some tea and then come back to watch the sunset. However, sunset was overshadowed by the clouds and we used the opportunity to take a nap at the beach instead.

If it was not enough to be in a beautiful resort during Diwali, it was also Michal's bday! Yash had advised me to carry an extra set of traditional clothes for Michal. The kurta fit him perfectly and I decided to gift it to him for his birthday. The resort was lit up in garlands, lights, diyas and rangolis, almost as if to welcome Michal to celebrate his birthday!

From Havelock, we made a day trip to Elephant Beach - a reserve forest and beach. A few dozen similar looking boats made the trip (all with a set of strangers on them) which made it important for us to remember our boat name. The organizers would tokenize us with the boat names for announcements. At Elephant beach, for the first time in all our lives, we walked on the sea bed (Seawalk). A 20-kg helmet was sat on our shoulders and a high pressure oxygen supply kept us alive 10 feet under the sea. We saw live corals and fishes while walking on the seabed - including clown fish. To be honest, this experience was slightly underwhelming but we were happy to experience something that is not commonly found in many places. Although intimdating at first, we soon became quite comfortable.

Back at the resort, we enjoyed live music after dinner. Michal believed that Padmini's voice resembled that of Madonna's and made a few songs requests. The songs were well sung and the requests were appreciated by Padmini 🎤🎵

Neil

From Havelock to Neil, our ferry ride was cursed with rough - not great for motion sickness prone travellers like myself. For the same reason, there were no activities and no sightseeing opportunities available. On a positive note, this set the perfect plot for a relaxing day.

Almost identical to Havelock, we had another rainy day, followed by cocktails at the bar. At Neil Island, there was another live musician. We requested some old hindi songs and Ronal delivered.

We were back in Port Blair on the second last day to catch our flight back to Delhi the next day. We enjoyed the sunset overlooking the horizon, from the edge of our resort.

Sunrise and shenanigans

On the last day, I woke up early to see a gorgeous sunrise at 4:30am. What began as a beautiful morning soon turned into airport troubles when the airport security could not decide if our amateur radio equipment should be stored in the cabin or be checked in. With all the confusion and lack of confidence, they decided that we should dismantle the handheld device and keep the battery in the checkin luggage 😖😕. To this day, I cannot imagine what must have been going through their minds.