Trip Report: The Andaman Islands

I just got back from ~2 weeks in the Andaman Islands. I suspect that it isn't somewhere many TGRers have been, so I thought I'd write up a little report as overall, my experience was really positive.

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What/where are the Andaman Islands: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are an archipelago off the coast of Myanmar/Thailand in the (conveniently named) Andaman Sea. They are Indian possessions. The islands are along a faultline and a few have some significant topography, but the ones were one were fairly low lying, though they had some hills and cool beach cliffs. They are lush, tropical, stick around 80 +/- 5 degrees with highish humidity and light breezes basically all the time. Many of the islands are surrounded by coral reefs. The 2004 Tsunami lifted the Andamans over a meter in some places and some of the coastal reefs became exposed. Diving is the big international draw.

The British had one of their more infamous prisons in Port Blair during the end of the colonial period and India gained control of the islands. There had been indigenous habitation of the islands for thousands of years, but that isn't immediately visible in the main islands, which are now populated mostly by transplants from the Indian mainland (lots of Tamils and Bengalis especially). Some of the outer islands have more indigenous presence, though, including North Sentinel Island which is protected from outside contact and became famous when an American missionary missionary illegally went to the island and was immediately killed by its inhabitants.

Getting to the Andaman Islands: - Basically the only way to get to the Andamans is to fly through India or sail there on your yacht. There aren't any international flights into Port Blair, but there are flights from a number of Indian cities, with Kolkata and Chennai seeming to have the most. You used to have to get a restricted area permit to visit as a foreigner, but now you just basically get your passport checked once you get to the airport in Port Blair.

You don't want to stay in Port Blair, though. It's an interesting city and the Cellular Prison where the Brits kept troublesome Indians is worth a visit if you're free, but it's not a particularly pretty town. There are resorts south of the city and if you're into nature, you can take a government ferry or bus to North Andaman where you have the highest point on the islands and some great sea turtle nesting sites (including leatherbacks). We didn't do this though, so I can't really comment on it. It doesn't see much western tourism and accommodations/tourist facilities. I'd love to get up there on another trip and see the turtles, but on this trip, we were traveling with my in-laws. It 1. wouldn't be there thing 2. my father in law has pretty severe parkinsons, so moving around is just tough in general, so we left it.

The two main tourist islands are Havelock Island (Swaraj Dweep) and Neil Island (Shaheed Dweep). Havelock is the larger and more developed of the two. We went to both. To get to either, you need to take a ferry from Port Blair. Your choices are the government or private ferry. Because we're bougie, we took the private ferry. Really most middle class and up indians did too. They were faster and more comfortable, but most importantly, I could book them in advance. The government ferry needs to have tickets purchased in person. We used Makruzz, but I'm sure the Nautika ferry would have been just a nice. It was about $20 per person/per ferry leg.

The ride from Port Blair to Havelock took about 1.5 hours. The check in procedure was kind of annoying as we basically went through security there. We didn't have to do that for any other leg. The sea wasn't rough, but it was rolling when we went out. Combine that with a lot of what I suspect were nautically inexperienced people and I've rarely seen so many people throwing up in bags. We got to the jetty and it took us a bit of time to find a taxi as the government ferry had gotten in just before our ferry and we got off last due to my father in law's mobility issues. Thankfully my foreignerness made me a lure to taxi drivers and we eventually went to our hotel.

Next up: Havelock Island.

Following. Thanks for this!

Yeah, checked in. Keep it coming


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Havelock island is the primary tourist spot in the Andamans. From the jetty at the north end of the island, most resorts are along the east coast on Route 5. The other option is to cut across the island on Route 4, which terminates at another beach. What happened to Routes 1-3 I have no idea.

We stayed at a relatively inexpensive hotel on the eastern side of the island. It was totally comfortable with a few power outages in the afternoon, though it seemed also to be a construction site as they were building a second row of cottages. Multiple OSHA violations were being constantly committed. The picture from the OP is at the end of the row of cottages. The place conveniently came with its own set of friendly street dogs in case you forgot to bring your own.

The beach was sandy at the edge, but then had probably 50-75m of old coral that was exposed at low tide. Coconut palms and other trees hung over the edge of the sand and it was just a lovely place to sit and look at the blue water and colorful boats. You can see the edge of the reef in the OP. Once you cleared that, you had live coral and lots of fish, but the visibility was pretty poor for the days we were there on that side of the island.

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Note: We believed that the hotels would have snorkeling equipment to borrow for some reason. They definitely did not. We bought masks/snorkels form Barefoot Scuba, which was a dive guide/camp a bit up the beach. If you're a diver, I'd stay there.

On the other side of the island there is a beach called Radhanagar Beach, which the local tourism agency promotes as having been named 8th prettiest beach in the world by some list. It was pretty, but I didn't think it was even the prettiest on the island. It was one of the nicest swimming beaches I've ever been at though. No coral, just white sand on a very gentle slope, warm water, gentle waves that were pretty much perfect for teaching my son to body surf. Just a really pleasant place to be in the water.

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Note that you don't see: Anyone in the water. Indian tourists are not really ocean people. I think that they just don't really grow up swimming that much. Behind me was a roped off swimming area. At the peak of the day, several hundred Indians were in it. The life guards would alternate not paying attention at all and waving to make people come closer to shore...within the roped swimming area! I respect people's desire to ensure safety and stay within their limits, so I shouldn't judge, but this beach is the friendliest I've ever been on. If you drown there, you are an idiot. So it was great. Everyone stayed within the ropes and we and like two other sets of foreign tourists had hundreds of meters of ocean to our self.

Bonus if you ever go there, walking around the point in the picture above, you find another beach and lagoon that's probably even prettier than this one. Or supposedly do. I didn't get to go see as I was minding my son and father in law in the water all day. But I will check it out if I get back!

We did a mangrove kayak trip. It was good for the audience, but I wouldn't necessarily say I'd choose to if you're a more serious kayaker. We also didn't go to Elephant Beach, which is the most famous tourist beach and has all the controlled snorkeling, glass-bottom boats, get skis, etc. Sounded like a bit of a shitshow, so we skipped it.

The beach we did really like was Kala Pathar. It wasn't super spectacular, but it was chill and I'd like to have explored more with my snorkel.

Next up: Neil Island.

Neil Island (Shaheed Dweep)

Neil is the smaller of the two principal tourist hosting islands in the Andamans. It was only a 45 min ferry ride from Havelock (and about an hour and 15 min from Port Blair. (Almost?) All the ferries do a circuit that goes from Port Blair -> Havelock -> Neil -> Port Blair, so it's best to visit Havelock before Port Blair if you want to do both to avoid a lot of extra ferry time.

This is the ferry jetty looking north toward Havelock island. As you can see, it isn't far, but the south of Havelock isn't really developed.
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Neil is smaller and less developed than Havelock. When we checked in at the Seashell Samssara, a much fancier hotel than the Havelock Exotic Beach Resort for a 7 night stay, they stated that we were there for a long time. When we checked out, they said we'd stayed as long as anyone had. My wife ended up at a local cricket match where she talked to a policeman who works there, but goes back to Port Blair where his family is on his off days. He couldn't imagine what you could get up to on Neil for a week as a tourist. It's seen as relatively boring.

These people are wrong.

Neil Island is pretty amazing. It's not yet really set up for Indian tourists. There are not "activities" organized for them. Well there are, but they are relatively limited (again things like glass bottom boat rides and some very constrained snorkeling). But if you like the ocean, the place is amazing. I could walk down to the beach from the hotel, cross maybe 30 meters of coral shallows, then swim/drift for half a mile along coral towers amidst lots of fish. It wasn't the absolutely best place I snorkeled on the trip, but for something you can just easily walk out to, it was awesome. And again, aside from myself and occasionally my wife, there was no one in the water. Had I had a more capable partner and a dive flag, you could apparently swim further out into the channel and sometimes see dugongs munching sea grass.

This is a picture at low tide. There is a coral reef sitting just past where the water ends here.
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In some spots, mangroves were starting to move out onto the beach.
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Next: Neil Island Part 2: Pirates!

Nice. Thanks for posting.Looks excellent. Never really heard of it. Is this near where MA370 went down? What is the diet there?

Super cool.

Sweet, always wanted to get there


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Very cool TR, thanks for sharing!

Nice

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Originally Posted by schindlerpiste

Nice. Thanks for posting.Looks excellent. Never really heard of it. Is this near where MA370 went down? What is the diet there?

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I'm not sure what the most up to date thinking says about where MA370 went down. I think it was suspected to have gone down in the South Indian Ocean where the Andamans are more in the north, but I'm not sure.

The most prominent cuisine was seafood, as you'd expect from a set of islands a long way from stuff. Fish, lobster, prawns all seemed to be common menu items. Coconut stews/curries were pretty common ways to prepare the smaller things. Annoyingly in these situations, I'm a vegetarian, so I didn't try out those delicious sounding options. There was a lot of general indian food too, both north and south Indian, brought by all the groups that settled there. One of the best things I ate was something called Hyderabadi paneer.

My favorite place on the trip was on the southeast side of Neil Island. It was called Sitapur Beach (previously it had been called Beach No 5, but they've renamed everything, much to the chagrin of the locals). It's on the other side of the island from the majority of the hotels, but we piled into auto rickshaws and we were off. A lot of the popular beaches have a lot of little stands nearby, but this one had only one little tea shack. The woman there was kind enough to lend us a plastic stool for my father in law, which endeared her to me. Also, the chai was good.

Sitapur is exactly the type of beach I like. It's got sand, coral, rocks, cliffs, giant fallen trees washed up on the shore, and just feels wilder than any of the other easily accessible beaches we visited. Even the steps down to it are sketchy. Again, you see a few people in the first hundred meters then it's basically empty. And again, if you saw anyone, it was basically all european tourists.

One of the coolest features was a shipwreck stuck on a reef. It's a wood ship, but after examining it, I doubt that it's too old. It very well may have been an illegal fishing vessel, so I'm going to call it a pirate ship. With a little bit of scrambling, wading, and snorkeling, my son and i made it out there to examine it. It was cool seeing fish taking shelter right around the hull.

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Eventually we continued on past the "pirate ship" but the tide was getting high and some of the the beach was blocked off. We did some scrambling and explored a few more small little beaches between rock outcrops, but eventually turned around. It would have been a cool adventure to keep moving up the beach, scrambling and swimming to see more, but that will have to happen another time.

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MH 370 did indeed go down in the Southern Indian Ocean (RIP).

When I was a kid, Indonesians, Malaysians and Indians didn't swim in the ocean. Dangerous. Full of animals. Etc etc is what our parents told us.

That's changed for those on the coasts, especially due to surf culture and there's now many more little brown kids (my younger self got his first surfboard from a RAAF staffer at Butterworth AFB) ripping around.

I suspect the Indian tourists were mostly mainlanders from cities

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Originally Posted by LeeLau

MH 370 did indeed go down in the Southern Indian Ocean (RIP).

When I was a kid, Indonesians, Malaysians and Indians didn't swim in the ocean. Dangerous. Full of animals. Etc etc is what our parents told us.

That's changed for those on the coasts, especially due to surf culture and there's now many more little brown kids (my younger self got his first surfboard from a RAAF staffer at Butterworth AFB) ripping around.

I suspect the Indian tourists were mostly mainlanders from cities

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I think that mindset is still pretty evident, at least in large parts of India (and my wife's family).. On a previous trip to the beach (south of Chennai), I apparently caused a near panic on the beach amongst watchers (and possibly life guards), but swimming out to a sand bar and body surfing down the beach. They were sure that they were watching my death in real time.

But I say that with some fascination, but no criticism. The ocean isn't anything to fuck with so if people aren't comfortable with it, I don't judge them all for not wanting to go out in it. Everyone looked like they were having fun, if in different ways.

And as you say, within a group at least, that seems to be changing. I've talked about the water averse tourists, but we also met some great dive guides and enthusiasts on the trip who are more comfortable in the water than I'll ever be. One features prominently in the exciting Neil Island Part 2!

sweet TR!

Looks like an awesome adventure!

We miss seeing you guys at Magic.

How much did your hotels cost?

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Originally Posted by MyNameIsAugustWest

Looks like an awesome adventure!

We miss seeing you guys at Magic.

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I miss Magic. It's one of the things that I really miss about moving West.

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Originally Posted by Muffcabbage

How much did your hotels cost?

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Of the beach front places, the first was around $75-90 USD a night, the second, fancier one was $120-150 (our room with a kid was more expensive for the extra person). Both included breakfast buffets that were pretty good. The second hotel was MUCH fancier and I would say really justified the extra expense - super nice pool, extremely attentive staff, etc. That being said, if we weren't traveling with my wife's parents, the first would have been more than good enough for us (and possibly preferable) and we may have stayed at even less fancy options. Looking now, you could stay at the fancy resort for notably less when it wasn't peak new year's holiday.

The more expensive place:
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I apparently didn't take any photos of the first place we stayed, so here's a photo I stole from the internet that the resort posted.
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