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Published: April 24th 2010
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Wow, what a trip. The day started at 0300 hours when my alarm rang, pulling my eyelids painfully open after three unfelt and obviously not enough hours of sleep. Thank God I was packed. Packed my phone, and headed straight for the loo. There I awake. Slip on my usual journey clothes, picked up my bag, and walked out.
Now, here comes the crazy lady whose day doesn’t begin without her meeelk “Meelk, I must have fresh meelk in za morning. I need lots of fresh meelk in za morning. Iz zere meelk? I only have meelk with two packets of beescits for beakfaast”, sometimes you really want to test to see what happens if she doesn’t get fresh meelk in za morning.
The other crazy lady with me on my travels is someone who either can’t hear or refuses to hear you the first time you say something. And her “Kailash Jeevan” is the answer to all questions; The solution to all problems; The cure to all diseases. Do I sound like her yet…not even half. You complain of a sprain…kailash jeevan. You complain of a mosquito bite - Kailash Jeevan. You complain of a rash - guess what -
Kailash Jeevan. You show a blister and …that’s right it’s Kailash f*^&ing Jeevan again. Thank God it’s not available in the Andaman Islands or I’d set fire to the whole stock of it.
One’s Italian and the other’s Parsee. God help me. They’re both my mother’s age and they both keep reminding me of that fact, especially whenever I lose my cool with them.
So, as I said…it’s 0300 hours. And I’m in a great mood. It takes us a good hour and a half to get to the start line of the convoy for the great Andaman Trunk Road. Although there’s a good one hour left before the first convoy begins, there are already about fifteen vehicles ahead of us in the queue. By the time the convoy began and we started our engines, there were about forty vehicles lined up behind us.
So, we drone on through the reserve, debating, and discussing, cursing and exclaiming…till we reached our first vehicle-ferry crossing.
At that point I saw a young boy who aimed an empty plastic bottle in the direction of the mouth of the creek and threw it with all his might. I waited for it to simmer inside
me and then called out to the boy in my sweetest voice: “Hi, excuse me! Where are you from?”
“Calcutta,” he blushed.
“Why have you come here…to the Andamans?”
“It’s very beautiful…”
“Yes, unlike Calcutta, no?”
He just stared at me blankly at this point, because my voice was already getting harsher.
“Well, I’d prefer it if you didn’t make it like Calcutta by littering our coastline with your plastic bottles. I’m from here, and unlike you, I actually care about this place…” I would have said more but the shattered look on his face made me put the brakes.
“Please don’t do that again.” He nodded and left. I felt bad.
Fast forward to the other side of the vehicle ferry. We were ushered into a speed boat where people pretended to wear life jackets that wouldn’t have saved itself leave alone the person wearing it…why I say pretended is because half of them were wearing it either back to front or inside out…don’t know how they managed that.
We were rushed through the pug-marked Lime Stone caves…sweated nearly to unconsciousness through the trek to the mud volcanoes and again sped off in the car toward lunch…which was another
half hour plus vehicle ferry away. Here the temperature had reached its peak…well, it had reached our peak anyway. Not a leaf moved. Air escaped us. Until we sat at the top of the vehicle ferry under a roof. Oh, how divine! We took four rides in that spot, while waiting for our vehicle to board, just to feel the moving air on our faces and escape the sun while we were at it.
Then it was time to get off.
And off we went for lunch. Nothing too exciting. Just the usual fish fry daal and rice.
Sleep kicked in, the heat was picking up as we crossed Rangat…the heat still rising as we approached Mayabunder…and suddenly it cooled off…I awoke and saw thick beautiful trees. Everyone in the car suddenly awoke. We watched the beautiful coastline of blue calm sea on our right murmur by, changing from sand to rock and back to sand while the left of us remained forest and trees and hills and trees.
Till we reached Diglipur bazaar.
I think it’s more interesting to shop there than it is to shop at the Port Blair bazaar even.
We headed for the Kalipur beach hotel
a cozy bed
kalipur beach hotel room and found ourselves a comfy bed to sleep in for the night.
The next morning though, we were a bit apprehensive about this trip of ours to a particular “Ross & Smith Island”. I knew it was two separate islands and I knew they were joined by a sand bar but that still didn’t explain why everyone referred to them as one single island.
Anyway, so that was my concern, while the two crazy ladies with me were worried about sand flies and no umbrellas, etc.
Chug chug chug chug our boat pushed forward. And in about ten minutes we saw a strange white line on the horizon. Neither of us could take our eyes off it. While the rest of the horizon was blue this white line grew thicker in height and stretched broader across.
“What is that?” I pointed toward it asking the boat driver.
“That’s the sand bar that joins Ross and Smith Island,” he informed me.
“But zeez islands are so far away from each ozer,” exclaimed the Italian lady.
“Oh My God!” I exclaimed understanding what lay ahead of us…Paradise!
“Wow!” exclaimed the crazy Parsee lady.
And we waited. With open mouths and wide eyes
till the boat beached onto the shore. We didn’t want to leave. We enquired about staying on the island but we were told no one’s allowed to stay here overnight. We swam and we snorkeled and skin-dived and ate and really understood why the road to heaven must go through hell. We had arrived.
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