visa (that is really easy to get). There are still some very remote tribes in the Nicobar islands, which are completely off limits to travelers.Doug was doing two weeks of work in Chennai and I needed to visit our activities there too so I also went for work. We then took off Friday thru Tuesday. Getting there takes a full day really so it was a really quick trip. It's a two hour flight to the capital Port Blair and then a two hour + ferry ride to Havelock island. The ferry was miserable! There are lines of chairs in this room with fans and AC (broken) for about 60 people. It's a hot, muggy place to begin with but then bunches of people in an enclosed room - it was soooo hot. Crawling with cockroaches. No drinks or food options. The boat was clearly not meant for people ferrying - maybe fishing? Once it started moving everyone left the seats to go on the upper decks but there you could just stand amongst machinery. There were no seats and a lot of water accumulating....
But the water was clear aqua and we passed by gorgeous islands that all looked completely deserted, full of palm trees and mangroves.
What we really came to do was scuba dive so we stayed at Vinnie's - the DiveIndia place. Basic tent accommodations that seemed eco-friendly. We'd get up in the morning, go for two dives and get back somewhere between noon and 3pm. The first day we got back early and thought we'd check out "beach #7" which was rated by Time Magazine as the best beach in Asia. What we didn't realize is that is was 12 kilometers away- I think we thought it would be like 30 minutes walk max. So by the time we got there (about 10 kilometers in - after much blistering of my feet due to a poor choice of footwear we accepted the ride that some very nice passer by offered us) all we wanted was food. And to be honest I'm still not sure if it was beach #7 or elephant beach, which are both in the same area but apparently different. It was pretty - the only beach that had waves. But it was an Indian family beach so it would not have been comfortable to lay out in my bikini while all the Indian women were in the water fully sari'd up.
The only other afternoon we had we stayed at our beach (beach #5, the second b
est beach on the island). Sadly the dive had taken longer and we spent a long lazy lunch chatting with the other folks we went diving with so we really only got like 10 minutes of beach sun. Since India has only one time zone - they force the Andamans to be on the same time, which is ridiculous as they aren't close in proximity. So the sun rises at 4:30 in the morning and sets at 5:30pm. But I went out into the water which was child-peed-in-the-pool warm. I went out at least a quarter of a mile and was still only up to my knees. It's the kind of water that I associate with the Caribbean... crystal clear, white sand, aqua. In the end we both wished and regretted that we didn't have more beach time.The dives were pretty amazing too. Other guests said it had rained the whole previous week, but it only rained for a few minutes a day while we were there. The first two days visibility wasn't great but good enough. The water was choppy too, and our boat on the first day died so we had to be towed the 30 minutes back to shore (top left picture). They have stunning fish - which I know nothing about so I can't tell you what I saw exactly but we did see a turtle, a bunch of lobsters, moray eels, and at least one fish as big as me. Most were medium sized fish with amazing colors. And vibrant coral. It's definitely the least polluted/touched beach I've ever seen. The #7 beach had tons of live shell fish on the shore - not a shell fish eater myself they looked big enough to eat. It is a bit weird to go diving to look at these gorgeous fish and then go eat fish....
There's very little to do on the island and it's not much effected by tourism. We're just past peak season (ended in March/April) so there weren't many people. The first day's dive was just Doug and I. Th
ere were a scattering of small huts, not a single big hotel. People don't seem to bother you - occasionally an auto would ask if we wanted a ride but there weren't really tourist shops. There was one central market but it was really for locals. Most locals are Bengali (came during Independence as I understand it). All the dive operators (there's two) are burmese who came from before Independence. Most of the locals make their money from farming it seems. They have goats, cows and land (rice, bananas and coconuts mostly it seemed).The return trip took a day and a half as flights and ferries aren't timed to match so you take a ferry back to Port Blair in the afternoon and take a morning flight out the next day to Chennai and then another to Delhi. The ferry on the way back was slightly nicer (even with the kid in front of me throwing up on the floor and no one cleaning it up) and one cockroach that walked across my back, which is a very disturbing feeling. And the first class upgrade back to Chennai helped:)
As Doug is in the last few months of his India tour and we're about to hit monsoon season where everything closes - we're packing in the last big trips. This weekend we're going tiger safari-ing.
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