(P) andamonium

Tamil Nadu and the Andamans.

The heat and the stress of travelling in India had, I had to admit, been getting to me. If travelling is all about mood, I couldn’t seem to shake my bad one. The challenge of India seemed to me to be less about punishing journeys to get to special places, as in Nepal and China, than about how
much irritation or hassle you can take before you run out of
‘zen’ and lose your temper. We needed a break. Somewhere beautiful, away from it all… perhaps not even in India?

Cue the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a place I hadn’t even heard of before the 2004 Tsunami nearly wiped them off the map. Closer to Thailand and Burma than to India, we thought maybe here would be a slice of South East Asian cool.

Of course, being administered by the most frustrating country on the planet meant that getting to the islands in the first place was by no means a relaxing experience.

What the guide books don’t tell you is that once off the plane, you have to stand in a 3-4 hour queue (2 hours if you’re lucky) which isn’t really a queue; more of a mass free for all, where tourists and locals throw themselves at the counter, desperate to get at least one body part in front of the person ahead. Once at the front, you push your application form through the small hole in the toughened-glass (necessary protection for the excruciatingly slow ticket staff) and hope for the best. Amid the mass of bodies, fights break out about every twenty minutes, at which point the police come and wave their batons around to break it up.

From a couple of other tourists, we somehow managed to bag the last two tickets for the boat departing the following day, leaving Sarah and Guy, and their parents who had come to visit them for the week, to their own adventures on a private fishing vessel with no life jackets, navigation lights, insurance or indeed common sense (the fisherman that is). Stuck as we were in the queue, we enviously watched them go: surely anything was better than fighting it out with the locals!

The absolute misery of the transport system was matched only by the peace and natural beauty of the islands. If you knew the Andaman Islands before the charter flights began, then you might be in for a minor shock: rebuilding work undertaken on Havelock Island (the main tourist destination) since the Tsunami has led to considerable development. But for first-timers like us, it’s still a world away from the beach bars and bucket drinks of South East Asia.

There is just one road, built especially for the prime minister who visited two years ago (it runs out at the point where he decided to turn back), along which everyone rides their bicycles and mopeds between the various restaurants, guest houses and dive shops of the eastern side of the island. On the other side of Havelock (a hefty $10 rickshaw ride away) is the spectacular, if un-inspiringly named, Beach 7. Here, giant primary forest reaches right down to a huge bay of perfect white sand, where the crystal clear turquoise water is the safest spot for swimming outside of Goa. Only when you get in the sea can you fully appreciate the beauty of it all, and so we swam and swam, just to keep looking, until our energy ran out and our fingers were shrivelled like prunes.

Sadly, it looks as though Beach No 7 might be ear-marked for development, as Indian Army survey ships were out in force when we were there and, as history shows, where detailed maps are made, ‘civilisation’ soon follows. One can only hope it’s the kind of ‘exclusive’ eco-tourist resort which, while being elitist, will at least preserve the natural environment there.

The scuba diving was also very good – although the coral didn’t quite match the other Andaman sites we’d dived around Ko Bida Nok in Thailand. One newly discovered site – Jackson’s Bar - didn’t disappoint, though, and we saw huge schools of barracuda, a white tip reef shark and an array of octopus, spotted rays, giant moray eels and other sea life. The following week, a few days on the quiet backpacker hangout of Neil Island promised a glimpse of the Andaman’s mascot, rare sea mammals called Dugongs (often known as Manatees), which are commonly seen by snorkellers.

Alas, for us, the Dugong was to prove elusive, but on the boat on the way home, I reflected that the Andaman Islands had been a lovely place to wind down after the stresses of mainland India, although given the nightmarish ferry terminal, not the perfect destination if you have limited time or aren’t travelling in South India anyway. For me, Thailand (if you pick the right spot) is still up there as my number one Asian beach destination. It certainly takes some beating… so roll on Cambodia and Indonesia!