Advertisement
Published: January 4th 2010
In order to get to Little Andaman we had to catch a ferry back to Port Blair, stay an evening, before a 6am departure for Hut Bay. It was a long, but enjoyable 6 hour journey with our new friends Joni and Uni. Amazingly the long journey to Little Andaman only cost 25 rupees each compared to 250 rupees to Havelock. This, perhaps, was the first sign that we were coming to a wilder, less tourist frequented island.
We were again greeted by hordes of rickshaw drivers vying for our business but this time the path wasn’t so clear, we didn’t really know where we wanted to go. Joni had been to the island about five years ago and had spoken of a few beach huts by Butler Bay beach. We asked to go there but were told they had been wiped out by the Tsunami of 2005. Little Andaman, in particular, had been badly hit by the Tsunami and you could still see the damage, even four years on. So instead we took a bus to a small town, close to Butler Bay, called Ramkrishna Pur, or ghost town as it appeared when we arrived. The one lodge in town
was open but with nobody around and all the shops and café’s closed. It already felt a million miles away from the relative haven of Havelock.
I decided to take a walk, whilst the guys watched the bags at the lodge, and came across the only open shop in town and Debu, the young owner, that spoke surprisingly good English. He assured me that Tuesdays was the only day everything closed down and that we would be able to stay at the lodge, but why not camp? We of course had no tent but he said he had one at home that I could use. By this time it was getting late and the idea of setting up camp was becoming less appealing so we agreed I’d meet him the next day to see his tent. The restaurants and shops opened in the evening and the owner of Ananta Lodge finally came and gave us two, distinctly dire rooms for the night. We all agreed that camping would be a better idea than staying here.
The next morning we hired what seemed to be the only rentable motorbike on our part of the island. It was a 125cc
Honda, with gears. I have never rode a proper bike before but now was the time. After a little trouble getting the thing started I finally pulled away and within minutes I was burning up and down the luckily empty and wide streets. What the guy at our lodge had failed to tell me was how little petrol the bike had. I was focused on riding the bike and in the process ran out of petrol. Pushing the bike back down the road I finally found the petrol station, filled her up and predictably couldn’t get her started. I had rented the only and worst bike in Ramkrishna Pur. Eventually she started, I picked Han up and we rode off into the distance. I was pleased to actually be moving and I had taught myself to ride a motorbike. All in a mornings work on Little Andaman.
I had promised to meet Debu later that morning to see the tent and potentially set up camp. At this point, however, I was still unsure why he was being so friendly and helpful. He, as most Indian people I have met, was forward, if slightly pushy in his desire to help,
and this left me a little suspicous. Was it money he wanted, maybe, but my instinct told me he was a good person. This constant see-saw of emotion between wanting to trust someone and knowing you are vulnerable as a foreigner punctuates so many encounters with people in India. Sometimes, though, you just have to go with instinct and so I followed him to his house.
Now when he said tent to me I thought of any normal tent back home. Poles, inner lining…you get the picture, but what he showed me was nothing more than a few tarpaulin sheets, no poles or rope just tarpaulin. Not to be perturbed I accepted his mother’s offering of chai and he assured me that he would help us put it up. So I went and told Han the news and soon we were off to his uncle’s house, Monto, where we found our camping position just off the beach. It wasn’t perfect, it was in a forest and seemed pretty open. It had also started to rain and so the camp was put on hold and we were invited to Monto’s house for lunch. They were all very friendly and the
food was good apart from when we found that the soup we had been eating had chicken’s feet at the bottom. These experiences just keep on coming.
After lunch while Han and I collected wood for our fire, they made the camp and although rather exposed, with only a groundsheet as our matress and tarpaulin over our heads, it felt adventurous. They left and we got into our mozzy net as the rain came again and the sun set. We lit candles and got comfortable on our ground sheet enjoying what was left of the day. As the darkness descended we were alerted to some rustling nearby and Hannah, quick with the torchlight, spotted the biggest crab we had ever seen trying to infiltrate our quarters. This was a crab of prehistoric proportions, unmoved by my attempts to scare him away. I tried to calm Hannah down with a candlelight game of chess but even that couldn’t distract her from the movements of dino-crab and all the sounds of the forest. It was turning into a camping nightmare. The rain had set in for the night, along with Hannah’s paranoia, so the decision was made to head back to
Monto’s house. It had been a very brief camping experience, we hadn’t even got to light our campfire but we ended up having a brilliant evening with Monto’s family who were very understanding and let us stay the night at their house. We had dinner, played carom, drank whisky and even had a friend of the family serenade us with a Hare Krishna song.
Our almost camping experience led to our friendship with Monto Mandel, who we found out was the leader of the town council. He invited us to a Hare Krishna festival the next evening which is celebrated each year, 24 hours a day, four days in a row. We shared a tuk-tuk there with Joni & Uni as well as Debu and his little brother. Six people in a tuk-tuk is normal in India we were told. The festival was bright, loud and the songs, well, very repetitive. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ramo, Hare Ramo, Ramo Ramo, Hare Hare. It could have become slightly annoying but it was done in an ever changing tune and with lots of jumping and drumming. After a few hours everyone congregated in lines for kedgeree,
a mixture of rice, dhal and potato, served on banana leafs and provided free of charge. We were the only westerners there and felt slightly out of place at a religious festival we had no belief in but were made to feel welcome by everyone there including Monto who made sure we were looked after with more chai and paan.
Indian people are obsessed with paan (a combination of betel nut and chewing tobacco topped with a bit of limestone) and Little Andaman is the home of paan. Everywhere you look there is betel nut. Betel nut trees line the streets and Indians line their mouths with the mildly narcotic chew from morning to evening. Predictably Monto loves paan and his house and land is strewn with betel nut being laid out to dry. As a guest in his house I accepted his offer of paan, having never tried it before, but curious to try the spit inducing substance. The taste was bitter and pretty damn horrible. The kind of taste that makes you question how anybody can like it, but after a while and a few spits later it began to grow on me. The problem with this,
however, was that the offers for paan kept on coming the whole night we spent there. He taught me the Bengali phrase for “would you like” and “yes please” so he would say “Lewis paan kaabi?” to which I would answer “kaabo” much to his delight.
The next few days weren’t quite as hectic as the previous two had been. We explored the town, including finding an impressive waterfall, played carrom with the locals on the street, and found some Australian’s on a beach who had been camping there for three weeks. The key to their success was special hammocks with zip on mosquito nets leaving them to sleep free of bugs and giant crabs. In the whole time they had been there we were the first people, other than fisherman, they had seen.
We were really getting into the swing of the island. It felt so real and yet we were in a small town in the middle of the ocean. We felt part of life on the island, we had friends and people seemed to enjoy having us there. It was a great mix of isolation on the beach and integration into their community. Just walking
down a street we would be invited for chai or to play cricket amidst hundreds of betel nut trees. The living costs were also the lowest we have had yet making everything just that little bit sweeter. Eating each day at small cafes by the market, you really felt you were joining in everyday life and not just being a tourist.
The time also came, whilst on the island, to have my first shave at an Indian barbers. The prospect of being shaved by a stranger with a cut throat blade hadn’t appealed to me when we first got to India but my shaving blades had run out and at 15 rupees per shave it made economical and comical sense. So with Hannah and Uni in tow I sat in the chair ready for my shave and before he had even put the foam on my face Debu arrived, followed by Monto and all his friends. It seemed like word of our movements got around fast in this town and they weren’t going to miss this. It was the closest shave I have ever had followed by a little neck massage. A very worthwhile 15 rupees.
On our
last day Hannah, Joni, Uni and I were invited to Monto’s for a picnic on the beach with the family. We had planned the food and festivities but on the day as we got to the beach it rained, heavily. We clambered under trees and managed to eat what was left of our soggy food. It felt like an English picnic apart from we swam in the sea. That evening Monto took Hannah and I to the hidden bar of Ramkrishna Pur where drinks are served under the counter and you drink up and get out. Hannah was, of course, the only woman in there but the locals didn’t bat an eyelid. It was a unique experience, if only he knew what bars are like in England.
It had been quite a time on Little Andaman. We felt privileged to be part of the place and were amazed at how special this little island felt. The weather had not been great but it didn’t matter as it was more about the people. The island was relaxed, yet functional. Even booking our tickets back to Port Blair, at the dreaded ticket office, was relatively easy and dealt with in a
smooth, efficient manner by Hannah. She knew the deal, making sure she joined the smaller, ladies queue keeping her elbows out at all times. Tickets were secured in around 45 minutes, an island record, for us anyway.
The diversity of our experiences was incredible. It truely is an unforgettable place where things just seemed to happen for us. We even accidentally gate crashed a wedding, had lunch with the family and pictures with the bride and groom, fittingly on my mum’s birthday. Only on Little Andaman does the most random of things become normal.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 13; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0248s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Josho
non-member comment
Bryson?
Mr Lewis, you are becoming quite the writer!