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Published: October 14th 2008
28th September
Port Blair The next day dawned early for me - i was just figuring out that the sun actually rose by 5 over here. A quick breakfast (which was included in the room rent, and which was quite extensive and I ate well - I had skipped dinner last night) and waiting for Ingo's flight to come in, I decided to take a walk to the market which did not seem too far away. And early mornings are always so great to walk, and what better way to get a feel of the place? As I left the hotel, I felt it would be a brilliant idea to buy an umbrella - the sun definitely did not feel inclined to show its face. The walk to the market was interrupted by many small, and then progressively big showers, and by half way I realised that my brave plan to walk to the market would be quite a dud. An auto was flagged down - ten bucks and he takes me to the market which is awww...just the turn away...anyway, i got him to drop me infront of the umbrella shop and by that
time, i really needed and umbrella. So i bought guess what - a John's Umbrella, and saw that the only jewellery shop was also a Malayalee one. Talk about traces of home ;-)!
Armed with the Umbrella I felt braver with the weather, and decided to resume my plan of walking. Through the old market roads - a temple here with a plastic board and a flower shop in front from where I bought a string of Jasmine - ten rupees, but all flowers apparently came from Kolkata, and then through the slowly erupting (actually not so much - it was a a Sunday) din, the Bengali sweet shop, and hotels (restaurants are always called hotels here), and the shoe shop and the clothes shop, and up and down the slightly sloped roads, and the old clock tower of the 1800s, and then down to the water sports complex area and the sports authority buildings, the point where Nehru hoisted the Azad Hind flag, and where today boys played a rain drenched cricket with all the fervour of an international tournament. It was pouring now by the buckets and my brand new umbrella provided scant protection, my skirt was
already flapping around my ankles with the rain, and it was still coming on in a steady stream. I wanted to walk to the waters, but it was proving difficult, a group of girls were out in the rain on some chore and looked at me with surprise, two young men were busy washing their autos and I decided to call an end to my adventure and take refuge in the safety of one of them.
Chatting up with the auto guy was as easy as it had been talking to all the people, and soon he was taking me on a tour of the town in his auto, right past the water edge. After a while we reached back to the hotel, where I badly needed a change of clothes by now. I fixed up with the same auto guy to take me to the airport to pick up Ingo. To me it seemed to be a good idea to leave for Havelock immediately, so that we can capitalise on the lost day. We planned to come back to Port Blair anyway a day before we were to fly out.
Thankfully, this time the flight had left, and
reached almost on time. Foreigners have to take special permission to enter Andamans and after that formality was over, he was out and we sped off to the ferry jetty to see if we could make it to the next boat to Havelock which was at 1. Before that another stop at Anand, which was clearly becoming my favourite place to eat for a quick lunch. Both of us had eaten really early, and there was to be no food on board the three and a half hour long ferry ride.
The auto drivers had assured us that we would get tickets right there, when we reached we realised the chaos, and our problem was that we got lumped with the rest of the tourists. I generally try to always keep a distance from the usual tourist crowd, tourist prices and hussling prevail all around them in a ring. But at the junction I had not much choice, we were late and there was quite a queue. Suddenly in the middle of the whole thing, they closed the counter and told us that we would get the tickets at the boat. So everyone makes a run for the boat, and there these guys are hell bent on selling us the Rs 260 tickets. No Rs 195 anymore apparently. A sheer waste, as we had no intentions of sitting at the hull in airconditioned push back seats, a hull with no view. The deck was my option, but we did not have much choice. Anyway, so we were in and we dragged our luggage down below into our seats. For all of 20 minutes of air conditioned pleasure. The boat was moving and we wanted to get up to the deck.
The top deck was already crowded with people who had precisely the same idea as us. We looked for a place to stand, a slightly less crowded spot, difficult to get which was also away from the sun. Oh yes, the sun had come out by then. The water - Bay of Bengal - was a deep indigo blue, a colour I have seldomn seen in the ocean, used to the greener Arabian Sea. And we were off. The trip was one of intermittent rain and sunshine, and us looking for shelter or the open sky and trying to negotiate safe space for our luggage. I discovered that my bag was indeed waterproof ;-). The islands continued on one side while the open sea on the other, while we stood and talked. The first stop was Neil Island and the water turned a dramatic turqouise blue - a colour I have never seen in the sea. It looked inviting enough to want to jump in, right there, right then. My appetite for the beach and a lot of swimming was certainly getting whetted. If only the weather would hold.
I was a little concerned if there would be a lot of hussling for hotels as we arrived at Havelock. I had spoken to a Bengali group and they seemed to be staying at Dolphin Niwas, the Andaman tourism department hotel on Beach no. 5. Oh yes, all the beaches had numbers, by some quirky British identification system. We were soon to find out that they also had (lesser used) names. I had been referred to the Wild Orchid on Beach no. 5 by Navin who had been my tour guide and information bin for this trip. He had spoken highly of the hotel, their staff and the food. To keep to the whole ' keep a distance from the regular tourist crowd' we walked ahead in front also because I did not want to be ambushed by a lot of hotel touts. But no fear, as we exited from the jetty, there was a man waiting with a Wild Orchid namecard. I asked him if there would be rooms available and he said yes, and guided us to a hotel vehicle. Things were off to a good start. We were obviously waiting for more people, people with confirmations, but soon the guys lost patience and we were off to the hotel. Winding through completely rural roads, we saw signs of PADI diving and snorkelling, and Barefoot who were the big guys over here in the island. I had looked them up briefly, but was not excited at having to spend 5000 rupees a head which seemed to be the going rates over there. The Wild Orchid was a quiter, smaller affair, built very close to the shore line (I don't know how - surely these zones were all CREZ controlled?), but the saving grace was that it was all technically natural material temporary structures. Rough hewn bamboo strcuture cabins with palm frond roofs, board finish inside, a pretty decent toilet. Rs 2000 for a non A/C double bedroom, Rs 2500 for A/C - no concept of single rooms, but I guess in an off season you should be able to haggle. Just a series of double cottages with a front balcony each. Suited us just great. By then our prime objective was to tear down to the beach, so right after we dumped our luggage in the rooms we did precisely that.
And that was the beginning of heaven. It is unbelievable that there exists in the world corners like this - secluded, secure, and absolutely picture postcard perfect beautiful. The waters were low and you could walk in quite a bit, and they were crystal clear and you could see right down to the white sand beach, and the brown leaves that floated in them. We treaded the water and loked around us, at the coconut and mangrove fringed beach. So many different types of mangroves, it was quite a sight. The sun had already almost set (I would say 5.15 was the sun set time) , and as we stood in the waist deep waters, the clouds in the sky parted, almost just for us, and out came one star after the other, in a star studded display. It was the first magical moment of that trip, but there were absolutely many more to come. When the water rose, we rushed to the shore, just at the nick of time to save our stuff from getting washed away (always leave stuff far higher up, stupid!), and then treaded our way back to our room.
We were ambitious about our dinner, the fish felt like just what we wanted, and yes, cooked just right, it was one of the best fish I have had. Okay, right now I am forgetting the name of it, but no, it was not the famed Red Snapper. Rarely done, with just the right level of a pale sweet sauce, it was perfection itself. We finished it off with some really delectable chocolate desserts.
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Born to travel
Sharon and Scott
Weather in Andaman
Hi, I am in Delhi right now but I will be heading to the Andamans in a few days. Is it still raining a lot there? I know it is border season, but we are keeping fingers crossed for sunshine...just wondering.