When - 5-11 Jan 2008 | Where - Chennai, Port Blair, Havelock | Base - Hyderabad | Who - Lubna and I | With - Nikon D70, 18-70mm

This was my most researched and planned trip till date. You do not want
to land in Andaman Islands without a booking. Actually, you do not want
to land in Andaman Islands without a booking and with your wife on your
arm!

I started off by listing all the decent hotels and resorts in
Port Blair and Havelock. Our travel dates hovered around New Years. And
the standard reply I heard from all hotels for the first two days of
planning was "I am sorry sir, we are fully booked for the season." We
nudged our dates a little bit to manage a luxury cabana (pink color
tents!) at Island Vinnies, a beach resort in Havelock. Island Vinnies
was also the home to one of Havelock's two scuba diving outfits - Dive
India. The other outfit being Barefoot Scuba.

Once the acco was in place, I jumped to cleartrip.com for the flights.
Hyderabad to Havelock was a fairly simple journey. Hyderabad - Chennai
flight, Chennai - Port Blair flight, and Port Blair - Havelock ferry.
Phew! Pritha from Island Vinnies arranged the round trip ferry tickets
and jeep transfers for a charge of Rs. 1000 per person. The actual
price of ferry ticket is Rs. 300 round trip. But since they are
difficult to get, there is a Rs. 200 service charge to fetch them. Add
five jeep transfers and the total of Rs. 1000 doesn't look very
outrageous.

With these bookings in place, we were almost set for our trip to an exotic destination on the world map - the Andaman Islands.

Day 0 - Hyderabad to Chennai flight

After all the drama in getting the bookings done, there was more
adventure left to this episode. We thought we started from home for the
airport with ample time left to catch the flight. But lo and behold
Murphy's law - everything will work against you to ensure you are late
for the flight. After slicing and dicing through peak Hyderabad
traffic, we barely made it to the 1700 hrs Hyd - Chennai flight.

In Chennai, we spent the night at Satyam's apartment. Next morning, we
had the 0415 hrs Chennai - Port Blair flight to catch. And after we
managed not to oversleep a faulty alarm (actually my mistake in setting
it up), we found that our trusted Chennai cabbie didn't turn up in the
morning. It was already 3:20 am! Pulkit and Satyam drove us to the
airport - in 11 minutes flat - just in time for our flight.

There is no feeling more tensed than we-may-miss-this-flight-today. And that happened to us twice in those last twelve hours.

Day 1 - Chennai to Port Blair flight, sightseeing in Port Blair, Port Blair to Havelock ferry

I promptly fell asleep as soon as I boarded the flight while Lubna took the window seat.

When Lubna nudged me to wake me up, the view outside our seat window
was simply – how do we say this – breathtaking! It was 6:00 am in the
morning and the sun was already peeping through the clouds, pouring
shafts of soft yellow light on to the sea below. Almond shaped islands
covered with thick green vegetation floated in the sea. A thin line of
white sand skirted around the islands. And beyond the band of sand, the
colors of the sea made beautiful paintings for mortals like us to see
and hold our breaths. It started off with shades of turquoise blending
into a dash of green and aquamarine that flowed into the regular blues
– sky, electric and deep.

The pilot announced we were flying over Andaman Islands. And that we
will not be able to land for a few more minutes as the Port Blair
airport opens only at 6:30 am. It was surreal as we hovered over the
islands in slow circles. This one view from the plane was worth all the
money and effort spent on this trip.

We landed at Port Blair and Vijay, our Mr. Fix It, informed us
that the ferry to Havelock would leave the harbour at 2:00 pm. That
left us with good 7 hours in this remote city, once called the black
water of colonial India. We hired a cab (a Maruti Omni) for half a day
that costed us 600 rupees. Sanjay, our cabbie, escorted us to the
points we wanted to see. We always left the luggage in the cab and we
felt 100% safe about it. As our cabbie would claim, "Your luggage is
very very safe in Andaman."

We nibbed some udipi stuff at a breakfast joint and set upon a
sightseeing tour. We zipped from Gandhi Park to Corbyn's Cove
(Portblair's better beach) to Anthropology Museum to Aberdeen Market to
Cellular Jail. All brief but entertaining stops. We filled our stomachs
with some fish and fried rice for lunch and headed to the harbour for
our ferry.

Port Blair to Havelock is a 2 hour 15 minute sail in the ferry. The
first view of Havelock island, a lush green rain forest coasting on
deep blue sea, was phenomenal. The trees were tall. Really tall. And
that white strip of sandy beach just invited you to jump off the ferry.
At the tip of the island where the forest ended was a light house,
absolutely white. Our ferry swirled past the lighthouse and Havelock
jetty was within eye sight now.

Our resort was about 3 kms from the jetty. Eight pink tents pitched in
the middle of a palm tree grove. Sea washed one edge of the resort and
brought some cool breeze. The advancing and receding waves created the
mood. Orange bulbs placed low along the pathways in the grove gave
character to the place. The tent had two beds, a floor fan, Mortein
liquidator, two side tables, a rack, and a large attached bathroom with
hot water. Rs. 1400 for all this in Havelock did not seem a bad deal.
One thing that left us longing for more was the restaurant in our
resort. Food was okayish and prices steep. Nothing to write home about.

A km away from our resort towards the jetty was the Havelock local
market where you can buy basic stuff (sunscreen, torch, scarves), eat
some good fresh sea food, and hire a bike. The highlight of the night
were the stars in the sky. What sky! The last time I saw so many
twinkling stars in the sky was around Rampur in Himachal Pradesh in Dec
2004. What awesome scene to enjoy when holding hands of your beloved!

Havelock had GSM reception but no GPRS connectivity. This meant my
Blackberry could make and receive phone calls. But messages and emails
had to wait till we got back to mainland. What a relief!