On the 5th I left Mayabunder about 8 on a crowded bus heading south to Rangat, maybe 45 miles away. We passed through hilly terrain, up to 500 feet in elevation, of forest and farms and several villages before traveling along Middle Andaman's rocky east coast. I got off the bus at Rangat Bay, a few miles before the town of Rangat, about 10 to wait for the 1 p.m. ferry. The ferry arrived soon after 12 and left at 1, sailing out of Rangat Bay and then south along the east coast of Long Island. I could spot the white sand beaches along the coast of Long Island. We docked near Long Island's southern tip about 2. The ferry continued south, eventually to Port Blair, but I got off and walked along raised cement paths, past the remains of wooden buildings from the days there was a sawmill here, to the island's only guesthouse, where I got a mattress on the floor of a room. I had lunch under the big tree in the center of the courtyard and then walked to a nearby small beach about 4. There are about 1200 people on Long, mostly tribal people brought in from what is now Jarkhand (formerly southern Bihar) to work in the sawmill. The sawmill is now closed but they have stayed on and now farm. There are many beautiful big trees on the island, so I guess the sawmill didn't get them all. There is a small temple just above the beach. I watched the sunset and then walked back. Three French tourists had gone out fishing and caught a big and delicious fish, which they shared with me for dinner.
I was up early the next morning and walked to the nearby village, full of wooden houses and other wooden buildings. There are no cars and only a few motorcycles. There are no real roads, just the raised cement paths, raised because of the torrential monsoon rains. I explored a couple of very large boat houses, now derelict, and eventually reached the ferry landing. It was hot and humid at breakfast in the courtyard and about 10 I set out to walk to Lalaji Beach, on the east coast. It took me about 40 minutes through farmland, with a final descent through forest, to the first beach. From there I couldn't find the inland path through the trees north to Lalaji, so I had to walk along the mostly rocky shore, which was scenic but a bit difficult. I eventually reached the long sandy curve of Lalaji Beach and walked along it. It is a beautiful beach with big trees backing it and a blue bay in front. There is a coconut plantation at the northern end. There were also sand flies, and after trying to find the inland path back, I started my walk back along the shore, not wanting to wait too late and have to deal with the incoming tide. I reached the small beach and spent maybe a half hour there before heading up through the trees and through the farmland. I spotted several trees with seed pods full of a cotton like material. In fact, the trees looked full of cotton balls, and the ground underneath was white with the cotton like material. I reached the guesthouse about 3 for a late lunch before heading to the nearby beach. I walked through the ruins of the sawmill and found the 1963 foundation stone. Later, just before dark, I walked into the village. A group of both boys and girls were playing cricket. This is the first time I've seen girls playing cricket. And the best player among them was a girl. Another group of boys were playing a game with a ball and several coconut halves.
It was hot on Long Island and I left the next morning, catching the small 7 a.m. ferry that travels through the mangroves on the way to the little port of Yeratta, a few miles from Rangat. The mangroves were beautiful in the morning light. We reached Yeratta about 8 and a bus took us to Rangat. I wanted to take the bus from Rangat to Port Blair, to see the jungle scenery on the way. I had an hour wait in that flyblown town before a bus to Port Blair arrived. I boarded, but the conductor said foreigners weren't not allowed on the road to Port Blair, as it passes alongside the reserve for the tribal Jarawa people. I had talked to people in Kalipur who just days before had taken the bus from Port Blair, so I didn't vacate my seat. A guy near me encouraged me to stay. Eventually, however, the conductor got the police and they made me get off. Disappointed, I took a bus and then a shared jeep to Rangat Bay again and waited to the 1 p.m. ferry. I boarded the ferry, which did not stop at Long Island but went directly to Havelock Island, a trip of two and a half hours. There were only 30 passengers and it was a pleasant trip. We passed Long and Strait Islands to the west and the three Button Islands and then the big islands of the Ritchie Archipelago to the east. From the port I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel with huts on the east coast, on Beach 5. (There is also a Beach 3 and a Beach 7, but I'm not sure about 1, 2, 4 and 6.) The tide was high and the beach therefor thin, but I walked along it as far as I could south, which wasn't far, and then north before sitting until dark. It is a pretty beach, with big trees and lots of hotels along it. Havelock is the main tourist island of the Andamans. Across the sea is John Lawrence Island. Many little boats, for scuba diving mostly, were anchored just offshore.
I was up before 5 the next morning and watched the sunrise as I walked along the beach. I lay in a hammock on the beach for a while and then took a short walk south along the road inland paralleling the beach. After breakfast I spent about three hours lying in a hammock under the big trees along the beach and reading as the tide receded, leaving the reef exposed. A ferry passed by. Just past noon I walked south less than a mile to the little village called Main Bazaar and caught a bus about 1 heading across the northern part of the island for about five miles to Beach 7 on the west coast. This beach is reputed to be the most beautiful in India, or even Asia, and it is indeed a beautiful beach, an arc of white sand for more than a mile backed by huge jungle trees. A large group (more than a hundred, maybe a couple of hundred) Indian tourists were frolicking near the center of the beach, near where the road ends. I walked through the big trees of the jungle on a path parallel to the beach towards its northwestern end (the beach faces generally southwest), a beautiful walk, and emerged on the beach near its end. I walked to the deserted end of the beach and then back to a beautiful lagoon formed by a gap in the reef, with a sandy bottom. A few western tourists, less than 20, were swimming or sitting on the beach. I sat for a while and then walked back along the beach, with lots of crabs, big and small, scurrying across the sand back to their holes at my approach. I sat here and there to watch them. I walked to the far end of the beach and watched a spectacular sunset just before 5:30. The day's last bus back to Main Bazaar left soon after 6. I visited the still open air market in the village before walking back to my hotel. I had a great fish dinner that night. I finally found a place that knew how to cook fish. Most Indian places overcook it, as they do almost everything else.
I spent a good part of the early morning the next day in a hammock on the beach and then after breakfast walked to Main Bazaar, rented a mask and snorkel, and caught the bus heading to Beach 7. I got off a couple of miles before the Beach 7 and took a 45 minute walk through beautiful jungle to Elephant Beach, a white sand beach with lots of gnarly mangroves growing along it. The white sand gleamed and even hurt my eyes as I came out of the jungle. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of Indians there, having arrived by boat for a morning's excursion. Most were swimming or snorkeling, but some were whizzing around on jetskis. I avoided the crowded Indian portion of the beach and snorkeled with a Russian guy (there were only three of us foreigners on the beach) near a deserted portion of the beach. There were some colorful fish and coral, but the water was murky. After about 45 minutes of snorkeling, I walked back the way I had come and just missed a bus to Beach 7. I walked along the road to the beach, passing an elephant tied up under a tree. I believe it is used for rides for tourists, as I had spotted elephant dung the day before along the path paralleling the beach. I had lunch and then walked along the forest path to the lagoon towards the northwestern end of the beach, where I swam and then sat on the beach. There were no fish to be seen, but it was a beautiful spot, with very blue water and great views back toward the huge trees lining the beach. The waves were good, too. Back on the beach, I did see a big fish jump out of the water and wondered what was chasing it. A few years ago a tourist was killed by a salt water crocodile in this lagoon, considered quite an unusual occurrence. Towards the end of the afternoon I walked back along the beach to its other end and watched the sunset before taking the bus back at 6. The sunset was much less of a spectacle than the evening before.
The next morning I spent some time in a hammock on the beach, had a long breakfast, and before 1 p.m. took an auto rickshaw to the port, where my ferry left for Neil Island, south of Havelock, at 2. We cruised down Havelock's east coast, passing the beaches and guesthouses and then Havelock's deserted southern part of the island before reaching its southern tip and docking on Neil's northern coast about 3:15. Neil is a small triangular shaped island and I took an auto rickshaw about two miles to a hotel on the north coast near Neil's western tip, where I checked into another fairly comfortable hut. I sat on the beach with the low tide exposing the wide reef and with Havelock across the water. Sometime after 4 I walked along the beach, backed by spectacular big trees, to Neil's western tip, with a nice, wide beach at low tide. I rounded the point and continued along the beach, with more big trees along the beach. Parrots and swiftlets filled the trees and sky and I spotted a kingfisher or two on the exposed coral rocks of the reef. The tide was coming in as I walked along the reef to some mangroves. Another spectacular sunset lit up the coral speckled water and the partly cloudy sky over South Andaman Island to the west. I walked back to my hotel along the beach just before dark and then sat in the dark on the beach before dinner. Besides me, there were only two other foreign tourists, both Russians. The rest were Indians, who generally came for just one night. A lot of them come on package tours of only four or five days, with maybe two nights on Havelock and one on Neil. Apparently, a lot of civil servants get subsidized air fares to the Andamans every few years.
I got up the next morning just after sunrise, though it was hidden behind clouds on the horizon. I walked to the western tip of the island and then along the beach beyond. I sat for a while on the low cliffs above the horizon and watched the sea. A dugong regularly feeds in this area, but I didn't spot it. A ferry from Port Blair on the way to Neil passed and then returned the way it had come. I walked inland a short distance to another hotel and then back to the beach at the western tip, where a policeman with a rifle stood guard under a thatched hut. I wonder why. Back at my hotel, I had breakfast and then lay and sometimes slept in a hammock under the trees along the beach from about 11 until 2:30. A wonderful breeze blew off the sea and I watched another ferry come and go.
After a late lunch I walked along the beach east to the port, a forty minute walk along a narrow beach littered with the trunks of giant trees. Other trees had the soil beneath their now exposed roots eroded and looked ready to fall. I reached the little port village sometime after 4, just as a religious procession was beginning. I think most of the people on Neil are migrants from Bengal. A man and several small boys at the head of the procession were dressed as tribal people, with grass skirts and bows and arrows, but the rest were in western or Indian (the women) dress, some carrying offerings, including one man with a small boat on his head with part of a banana tree trunk as its hull. There were drummers and a horn player. Fireworks were set off and one person carried a pot of incense. I never did find out the reason for the procession, but I followed it around for more than an hour. Periodically, different women, one at a time, would dance, acting possessed. Some of them had painted faces. Other women would pour buckets of water on their heads and they would eventually quiet down. Eventually leaving the procession, I walked back to my hotel on the road and then sat on the beach until dark.
The next morning I sat on the beach and watched the waves until breakfast. I snorkeled around Neil's western tip from about 10 to 1, but the water was murky and there weren't that many fish. The water over the sandy bottom was a beautiful blue, though. I walked back on the beach to my hotel and then sat on the beach before and after lunch. About 4 I walked again to the Neil's western tip. I walked up and down the beach and then sat on the sand for the sunset. The sky was cloudier than the evening before, making for an especially spectacular post sunset sky as the clouds changed colors before darkening. A sliver of a moon was descending as I walked back just before dark.
I was up just after sunrise the next morning and sat on the beach before walking down to the west end of the island. I hung around there until about 8, watching the sea as the tide came in. A ferry and a dive boat passed by. No dugong. After breakfast I sat in the cool breeze on the beach in front of my hotel until lunch. There was always a good breeze there. It clouded up and after lunch the clouds blackened, the wind increased, and it eventually began to rain. It rained hard for only about ten minutes, but that was enough to dissuade me from taking the 3:30 ferry to Port Blair. However, it soon began to clear and about 4 I walked to the western tip of the island. Dead leaves, blown by the strong wind before the rain, littered the beach. I watched another beautiful sunset through the clouds. South Andaman's profile was very clear after the rain. As the night before, the sky was particularly spectacular after the sunset as the clouds changed colors with a crescent moon high above. I stayed until dark and then walked back along the beach in the dark to my hotel.
I was up early the next morning and walked to the nearby village, full of wooden houses and other wooden buildings. There are no cars and only a few motorcycles. There are no real roads, just the raised cement paths, raised because of the torrential monsoon rains. I explored a couple of very large boat houses, now derelict, and eventually reached the ferry landing. It was hot and humid at breakfast in the courtyard and about 10 I set out to walk to Lalaji Beach, on the east coast. It took me about 40 minutes through farmland, with a final descent through forest, to the first beach. From there I couldn't find the inland path through the trees north to Lalaji, so I had to walk along the mostly rocky shore, which was scenic but a bit difficult. I eventually reached the long sandy curve of Lalaji Beach and walked along it. It is a beautiful beach with big trees backing it and a blue bay in front. There is a coconut plantation at the northern end. There were also sand flies, and after trying to find the inland path back, I started my walk back along the shore, not wanting to wait too late and have to deal with the incoming tide. I reached the small beach and spent maybe a half hour there before heading up through the trees and through the farmland. I spotted several trees with seed pods full of a cotton like material. In fact, the trees looked full of cotton balls, and the ground underneath was white with the cotton like material. I reached the guesthouse about 3 for a late lunch before heading to the nearby beach. I walked through the ruins of the sawmill and found the 1963 foundation stone. Later, just before dark, I walked into the village. A group of both boys and girls were playing cricket. This is the first time I've seen girls playing cricket. And the best player among them was a girl. Another group of boys were playing a game with a ball and several coconut halves.
It was hot on Long Island and I left the next morning, catching the small 7 a.m. ferry that travels through the mangroves on the way to the little port of Yeratta, a few miles from Rangat. The mangroves were beautiful in the morning light. We reached Yeratta about 8 and a bus took us to Rangat. I wanted to take the bus from Rangat to Port Blair, to see the jungle scenery on the way. I had an hour wait in that flyblown town before a bus to Port Blair arrived. I boarded, but the conductor said foreigners weren't not allowed on the road to Port Blair, as it passes alongside the reserve for the tribal Jarawa people. I had talked to people in Kalipur who just days before had taken the bus from Port Blair, so I didn't vacate my seat. A guy near me encouraged me to stay. Eventually, however, the conductor got the police and they made me get off. Disappointed, I took a bus and then a shared jeep to Rangat Bay again and waited to the 1 p.m. ferry. I boarded the ferry, which did not stop at Long Island but went directly to Havelock Island, a trip of two and a half hours. There were only 30 passengers and it was a pleasant trip. We passed Long and Strait Islands to the west and the three Button Islands and then the big islands of the Ritchie Archipelago to the east. From the port I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel with huts on the east coast, on Beach 5. (There is also a Beach 3 and a Beach 7, but I'm not sure about 1, 2, 4 and 6.) The tide was high and the beach therefor thin, but I walked along it as far as I could south, which wasn't far, and then north before sitting until dark. It is a pretty beach, with big trees and lots of hotels along it. Havelock is the main tourist island of the Andamans. Across the sea is John Lawrence Island. Many little boats, for scuba diving mostly, were anchored just offshore.
I was up before 5 the next morning and watched the sunrise as I walked along the beach. I lay in a hammock on the beach for a while and then took a short walk south along the road inland paralleling the beach. After breakfast I spent about three hours lying in a hammock under the big trees along the beach and reading as the tide receded, leaving the reef exposed. A ferry passed by. Just past noon I walked south less than a mile to the little village called Main Bazaar and caught a bus about 1 heading across the northern part of the island for about five miles to Beach 7 on the west coast. This beach is reputed to be the most beautiful in India, or even Asia, and it is indeed a beautiful beach, an arc of white sand for more than a mile backed by huge jungle trees. A large group (more than a hundred, maybe a couple of hundred) Indian tourists were frolicking near the center of the beach, near where the road ends. I walked through the big trees of the jungle on a path parallel to the beach towards its northwestern end (the beach faces generally southwest), a beautiful walk, and emerged on the beach near its end. I walked to the deserted end of the beach and then back to a beautiful lagoon formed by a gap in the reef, with a sandy bottom. A few western tourists, less than 20, were swimming or sitting on the beach. I sat for a while and then walked back along the beach, with lots of crabs, big and small, scurrying across the sand back to their holes at my approach. I sat here and there to watch them. I walked to the far end of the beach and watched a spectacular sunset just before 5:30. The day's last bus back to Main Bazaar left soon after 6. I visited the still open air market in the village before walking back to my hotel. I had a great fish dinner that night. I finally found a place that knew how to cook fish. Most Indian places overcook it, as they do almost everything else.
I spent a good part of the early morning the next day in a hammock on the beach and then after breakfast walked to Main Bazaar, rented a mask and snorkel, and caught the bus heading to Beach 7. I got off a couple of miles before the Beach 7 and took a 45 minute walk through beautiful jungle to Elephant Beach, a white sand beach with lots of gnarly mangroves growing along it. The white sand gleamed and even hurt my eyes as I came out of the jungle. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of Indians there, having arrived by boat for a morning's excursion. Most were swimming or snorkeling, but some were whizzing around on jetskis. I avoided the crowded Indian portion of the beach and snorkeled with a Russian guy (there were only three of us foreigners on the beach) near a deserted portion of the beach. There were some colorful fish and coral, but the water was murky. After about 45 minutes of snorkeling, I walked back the way I had come and just missed a bus to Beach 7. I walked along the road to the beach, passing an elephant tied up under a tree. I believe it is used for rides for tourists, as I had spotted elephant dung the day before along the path paralleling the beach. I had lunch and then walked along the forest path to the lagoon towards the northwestern end of the beach, where I swam and then sat on the beach. There were no fish to be seen, but it was a beautiful spot, with very blue water and great views back toward the huge trees lining the beach. The waves were good, too. Back on the beach, I did see a big fish jump out of the water and wondered what was chasing it. A few years ago a tourist was killed by a salt water crocodile in this lagoon, considered quite an unusual occurrence. Towards the end of the afternoon I walked back along the beach to its other end and watched the sunset before taking the bus back at 6. The sunset was much less of a spectacle than the evening before.
The next morning I spent some time in a hammock on the beach, had a long breakfast, and before 1 p.m. took an auto rickshaw to the port, where my ferry left for Neil Island, south of Havelock, at 2. We cruised down Havelock's east coast, passing the beaches and guesthouses and then Havelock's deserted southern part of the island before reaching its southern tip and docking on Neil's northern coast about 3:15. Neil is a small triangular shaped island and I took an auto rickshaw about two miles to a hotel on the north coast near Neil's western tip, where I checked into another fairly comfortable hut. I sat on the beach with the low tide exposing the wide reef and with Havelock across the water. Sometime after 4 I walked along the beach, backed by spectacular big trees, to Neil's western tip, with a nice, wide beach at low tide. I rounded the point and continued along the beach, with more big trees along the beach. Parrots and swiftlets filled the trees and sky and I spotted a kingfisher or two on the exposed coral rocks of the reef. The tide was coming in as I walked along the reef to some mangroves. Another spectacular sunset lit up the coral speckled water and the partly cloudy sky over South Andaman Island to the west. I walked back to my hotel along the beach just before dark and then sat in the dark on the beach before dinner. Besides me, there were only two other foreign tourists, both Russians. The rest were Indians, who generally came for just one night. A lot of them come on package tours of only four or five days, with maybe two nights on Havelock and one on Neil. Apparently, a lot of civil servants get subsidized air fares to the Andamans every few years.
I got up the next morning just after sunrise, though it was hidden behind clouds on the horizon. I walked to the western tip of the island and then along the beach beyond. I sat for a while on the low cliffs above the horizon and watched the sea. A dugong regularly feeds in this area, but I didn't spot it. A ferry from Port Blair on the way to Neil passed and then returned the way it had come. I walked inland a short distance to another hotel and then back to the beach at the western tip, where a policeman with a rifle stood guard under a thatched hut. I wonder why. Back at my hotel, I had breakfast and then lay and sometimes slept in a hammock under the trees along the beach from about 11 until 2:30. A wonderful breeze blew off the sea and I watched another ferry come and go.
After a late lunch I walked along the beach east to the port, a forty minute walk along a narrow beach littered with the trunks of giant trees. Other trees had the soil beneath their now exposed roots eroded and looked ready to fall. I reached the little port village sometime after 4, just as a religious procession was beginning. I think most of the people on Neil are migrants from Bengal. A man and several small boys at the head of the procession were dressed as tribal people, with grass skirts and bows and arrows, but the rest were in western or Indian (the women) dress, some carrying offerings, including one man with a small boat on his head with part of a banana tree trunk as its hull. There were drummers and a horn player. Fireworks were set off and one person carried a pot of incense. I never did find out the reason for the procession, but I followed it around for more than an hour. Periodically, different women, one at a time, would dance, acting possessed. Some of them had painted faces. Other women would pour buckets of water on their heads and they would eventually quiet down. Eventually leaving the procession, I walked back to my hotel on the road and then sat on the beach until dark.
The next morning I sat on the beach and watched the waves until breakfast. I snorkeled around Neil's western tip from about 10 to 1, but the water was murky and there weren't that many fish. The water over the sandy bottom was a beautiful blue, though. I walked back on the beach to my hotel and then sat on the beach before and after lunch. About 4 I walked again to the Neil's western tip. I walked up and down the beach and then sat on the sand for the sunset. The sky was cloudier than the evening before, making for an especially spectacular post sunset sky as the clouds changed colors before darkening. A sliver of a moon was descending as I walked back just before dark.
I was up just after sunrise the next morning and sat on the beach before walking down to the west end of the island. I hung around there until about 8, watching the sea as the tide came in. A ferry and a dive boat passed by. No dugong. After breakfast I sat in the cool breeze on the beach in front of my hotel until lunch. There was always a good breeze there. It clouded up and after lunch the clouds blackened, the wind increased, and it eventually began to rain. It rained hard for only about ten minutes, but that was enough to dissuade me from taking the 3:30 ferry to Port Blair. However, it soon began to clear and about 4 I walked to the western tip of the island. Dead leaves, blown by the strong wind before the rain, littered the beach. I watched another beautiful sunset through the clouds. South Andaman's profile was very clear after the rain. As the night before, the sky was particularly spectacular after the sunset as the clouds changed colors with a crescent moon high above. I stayed until dark and then walked back along the beach in the dark to my hotel.
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