After nearly two weeks of island living, I’ll be leaving the Andamans tomorrow morning. And I didn’t think I’d be this sad to be leaving a place behind when I have India to look forward to. But there is something very special about these islands, where the sun rises at 5am and sets at 6pm (because despite being geographically closer to Burma and Thailand, they still run on mainland-India time) and where everything is a bit chaotic, very bureaucratic, but oh-so beautiful, fascinating, welcoming and relaxing. In short: so-very-Indian. Except for that relaxing bit, of course. That’s an island thing for sure.

I spent a week on Havelock, long enough to log 4 dives, learn to judge spatial distances for on-coming cars, buses, rickshaws, cyclists, pedestrians and other scooters on the very narrow roads, accept that banana prices fluctuate with no logic whatsoever at the market in village #3, wonder why the price for water is 22 rupees when they never have the exact change and they just knock the 2 rupees off your bill and tell you to come back and pay it when you do have change (which you never do because no one has smaller change than 10 rupees!) and queue for ages for boat tickets, and with good enough timing to experience Holi on untraditional Indian soil.

On arrival at Port Blair on Big Andaman, I headed straight for the jetty and managed to get myself a ticket for the 11am boat to Havelock. I say ‘I managed’ but really it was with some serious hand-holding from a French guy I got chatting to as we exited the terminal. He had been to the Andamans before and knew the system. Which I so very obviously did not. So he saved me a rickshaw ride by getting me to tag along with him on the bus and made sure I got the right form to fill in when we got to the ticket office. So as planned, I was on Havelock by mid-afternoon.

I spent my first few days at Barefoot Scuba on beach #3 after which they were fully booked and I had to relocate from my lovely little A-frame hut. So I moved down the road to Coconut Grove (managed by lovely Harry) and a slightly bigger hut (with seats and the promise of a hammock on the little front porch) on beach #5. In both places, I had to accept that travelling alone in India means paying double for accommodation which I unsurprisingly found super-annoying.

The diving was amazing (the first day more than the second but that was mostly due to visibility), the fish were just stunningly beautiful. On the second day, the waves were pretty rough so our instructor suggested we spend our surface interval on a little uninhabited island near our 2nd dive site – so we swam to shore across the rocks and coral and got to spend a little bit of time wandering up the beach, knowing only snakes and birds and the occasional Andaman wild pig were hiding in the jungle next to us. That bucket list item of setting foot on an uninhabited island just got ticked off. Now I just gotta find one I can camp on!

Life on Havelock soon settles into a routine of sweet lassis, samosas, masalas, scooter trips to beach #7, trips to the village market for fruit and judging the tide correctly to let you walk straight into the turquoise sea 20m from the door of your hut (without having to climb over 50m of rock). And attempted trips to the wine shop. Because not many of the resorts have alcohol licenses and those that do tend to overprice drinks slightly, it’s only logical to get your own provisions. But that damn wine shop seemed to be open for business only between never-o’clock and fuck-off because I tried in vain to get drinks there for 6 days and didn’t manage to once. There were some people in the neighbouring huts that I think should have taken a commision for being my suppliers but my budget is thankful that they didn’t.

Holi was such a fun day – although my skin and hair would argue otherwise judging by the fact that I’m still pink and it’s been nearly a week. My impression was that it’s basically a holiday where kids get super excited playing with coloured powder and water pistols and adults get to act like kids. There is obviously a religious premise but I’m not entirely sure how that’s being embraced in the celebrations. I braved the streets early because I needed to hit up the one ATM on the island and figured earlier was safer. I was wrong. It’s a long walk from beach #5 into the village if you don’t even make it out of the grounds of your resort before 7 kids have realised there aren’t many passers-by down their end of the beach and I was an easy target. And once you’ve been coated in the first layer of coloured powder, you’re a target for everyone. But everyone’s spirits were great and people will hand you sweets, invite you in to dance and have a drink in big family gatherings and shouts of ‘happy Holi!’ ring out from every person you pass. I know (from other people’s stories) that Holi isn’t this pleasant for women in other parts of India but my experience was 100% a positive one and I’m so happy about that.

After 5 hours of changing from pink to yellow to green to blue to purple on the streets of Havelock, most people were back at the resort, trying (in vain) to wash the colour off. Scrubbing with sand and soap and shampoo only helped marginally and eventually we had all given up on getting the colours off in any other way than naturally, as time will allow it. It was the last outing for my kawasakis who have put up a good fight so far on this trip but are so beyond being useful footwear at this stage. At least they went out in awesome colourful style. My attempt at getting photos of the festivities involved encasing my compact camera in a clear plastic bag but that meant I couldn’t see the screen when I took shots so nothing is framed correctly and the clear plastic bag was not clear enough to have any colours come through remotely like they looked in real life so I’ve only included post-Holi-madness photos on here because any of the other ones would do a serious dis-service to my memories of that day.

After a week on Havelock, I felt the pull for a change of scenery so I went to Neil Island. Which Harry at Coconut Grove warned me is so quiet with nothing to do that he would expect me back the next day. But that’s not how Neil played out for me.

I loved my time on Neil. Despite doing even less than I did most of the time on Havelock. I walked around for 4 hours one day before settling on spending a few hours on beach #5. And I rented a bicycle which I went all around the island on, stopping at the gorgeous beach #1 for high-tide swimming and at the natural rock bridges on beach #2 at low-tide. The travellers I met on Neil fall a lot further up the hippie-scale than I do but I loved their company, hearing their travel stories and musing over the best designs for coconut jewellery. And I loved the food – fresh grilled red snappers at Blue Sea, coconuts on the beaches, pomegranate and water- and honeydew melon at the market and, as mango season was just starting, the most amazing mango lassies. But my flight was coming up and I had to return to Port Blair the day before to catch it which meant leaving lovely Neil Island behind. Which I really really really did not want to do. And sitting in Port Blair now, I’m totally wishing myself back there and wondering when I’ll be there next and how that can’t come soon enough.

I took the early boat from Neil which meant arriving at the ticket office at 6.30, 2 hours before departure, to purchase my ticket. Again proving its awesomeness, on Neil there are far less people than on Havelock which means far less queuing and apparently 6.30 is also a little early for women to be in charge of sorting out tickets because I was the only female there which meant the women’s queue was totally just a way to queue-jump (I actually joined the men’s queue as there was only one person writing out the tickets but got waved to the women’s line which apparently meant I was next in line).

Back in Port Blair, I decided to head to Ross Island for a little day-trip but there is a set departure time from Ross depending on when you arrive so you are only allowed about 1h45min on the island. Which is not good for me because I like to wander. Especially when the island turns out to be totally fascinating. In the heydays of the British Raj, it was called ‘the Paris of the East’ and the history of the place is pretty incredible – a seat of power of the British Empire when the islands were used as a penal colony, cracked by an earthquake in 1941, captured by the Japanese during WWII and a buffer that saved Port Blair from too extensive damage from the 2004 tsunami. I picked the route opposite to where most of the other tourists were heading which meant I got to wander around totally on my own which made it feel a bit like I’d walked through a portal to another world. Overgrown ruins of houses, deer and peacocks roaming freely about and kingfishers flying from tree to tree above. I took so many photos I have given up looking through them all and have just done a browse instead – otherwise I’d have driven myself insane by trying to pick which ones were the best representation to post on here. 

After Ross, I stopped by the Cellular Jail in Port Blair which was really informative about the freedom fighters and how political prisoners were treated by the British and where I learned what Kala Pani means (and became very happy I hadn’t stayed at the resort of that name on Neil). I also realised that I know next to nothing about what actually went on when the British were out in the world running their empire and I should really pick up a book or two about this at some point.

Tomorrow morning I’m flying back to the mainland, leaving this lovely group of islands behind. I’m super-excited for India but it’s definitely masked by a sadness over having to leave this place. I know I keep saying I’ll come back to a bunch of the places I’ve been visiting on this trip but the Andamans will probably take the lead if I was to prioritise. I’m pretty sure I can pretty confidently say that this is my new favourite place on earth.

Today I’m listening to: First Aid Kit – ‘Stay Gold’

 

Note: this is just a little footnote because I’ll need someone to remind me when I get home to fact-check something I read about the Andamans on a travel guide app I was shown by someone I met in Thailand. It says that the Nicobar Islands were originally colonised by Denmark in 1755 and named New Denmark and later Frederiksøerne. Was there seriously a ‘Danish East India Company’? And were the Danes really so relaxed about managing their colonies that Austria was able to accidentally claim them for 6 years because they thought Denmark had abandoned its claims to them? And did they really only become British when Denmark sold them to them in 1868? The Lonely Planet has no such info, nor does any of the information plaques about the islands’ history at the Cellular Jail in Port Blair. I’m seriously curious about whether there is any truth to this or not. And then I’d like to know why we were never taught about the extent of Danish colonisation in history classes at school because we seem to have been selling islands left, right and centre and surely kids should learn about that so they don’t grow up thinking we were so much more peaceful and considerate during that time than certain other European countries.