April 30 - May 10, 2013: Darjeeling, Ghoom, and Kurseong

Before heading up to Darjeeling from Siliguri on the 30th, I decided to take the hour bus ride west to the Nepal border.  My 180 day stay in India allowed by my visa was ending on May 17 and I doubted that was enough time for me to see all that I wanted to see in Darjeeling and Sikkim, so I headed to the border to see if I could leave and reenter India and get more time. Until last December, India required that you spend 60 days outside India before reentering, but the government had removed that restriction.  Still, I wasn't sure that applied to my ten year visa.

I took an 8:30 bus west to the border at Panikanti, about 15 miles from Sililguri, passing tea plantations and the town of Naxalbari, birthplace of the Marxist Naxalbari guerrillas, on the way.  The friendly Indian immigration officer said I could leave and come back, so I had him stamp my passport and I walked over the bridge to the immigration office in Kakarbhitta, Nepal.  I remembered crossing this bridge in the dark one night in 1979 after a long bus ride from Kathmandu.  I wasn't allowed to enter India because I didn't have a special permit to enter West Bengal, required at that time, and thus had to return to Kakarbhitta for the night and cross into India the next day at an alternative crossing into Bihar.

It cost me $25 and 100 rupees for a Nepali visa.  After getting the visa, when I told them I wanted to immediately return to India, they told me I had to spend at least one night in Nepal.  I tried to talk them out of that, but they showed me the regulation.  Finally, one of them suggested a "gift."  I asked how much and he said $10.  We settled for the 400 Nepali rupees they had given me in lieu of $5 in change when I purchased my visa, plus another 100 Indian rupees, so about $7 in total.  I got stamped out and walked back across the bridge and got a new entry stamp for India.  I arrived in Siliguri after a crowded bus ride about 12:30.

Back in Siliguri I went to the train station to see about the narrow gauge train to Darjeeling and found that since a landslide in 2010 it no longer runs from Siliguri, but from Kurseong at about 4800 feet elevation.  I had lunch and at 2 left on one of the many frequent jeeps that travel from Sililguri at about 400 feet elevation to Darjeeling at about 7000 feet elevation.  Seats cost 130 rupees each, but I bought the two front seats for 260.  The road followed the two foot wide tracks of the rail line for about 10 or 15 minutes before branching off to the northwest.  I could see the foothills of the Himalayas soon after leaving Siliguri, which is only about 50 miles from Darjeeling.  We drove through flatlands planted with tea at first and passed through a military base with roadside signs quoting George Patton, which seemed odd to me, followed by Buddha and Gandhi, which I suppose was even odder.

We reached the hills about half an hour after leaving Siliguri, after a gentle rise to about 1500 feet elevation. The road, with lots of ugly development along it, climbed steeply to Kurseong under overcast skies and rejoined the narrow railroad bed just before Kurseong about 3:15.  The train station in Kurseong has a sign stating it is at 4864 feet elevation.  The road and train tracks run right alongside each other through town under the shops lining the street.  Kurseong has about 40,000 people, mostly Nepali, and its streets were clogged.  Almost all the school children along the road through town were wearing sweaters in the cool weather.  Clouds had begun to swirl by as we entered Kurseong and in town we encountered a thick fog.

The climb was less steep after Kurseong, with the train tracks always right along the road.  It was foggy all the way, and especially so when we reached the high point of the road and rail line at the small town of Ghoom at 7400 feet.  From Ghoom we descended the remaining four or five miles to Darjeeling and passed the narrow gauge train coming from Darjeeling.  The weather brightened somewhat as we descended and we reached Darjeeling about 4:30.  It was still cloudy, but the sun did make a brief appearance.  The main road through Darjeeling, called Hill Cart Road as it is the route of the original road from the plains constructed in 1839, was clogged with traffic, including jeeps headed all over the hills and to the plains.  Darjeeling now has over 100,000 people.

From the jeep stand on Hill Cart Road it is a steep climb (maybe 300 feet up) through narrow lanes to Chowrasta, the main square of Darjeeling.  I huffed and puffed my way up with my backpack and then took another narrow, but less steep, lane from Chowrasta to a hotel where I checked in before taking a walk.  It was cloudy and cool, but not raining.  I had changed into long trousers and put on my windbreaker on the trip up from Siliguri, but was still wearing sandals.  I walked back down to Chowrasta, filled with Indian tourists (and locals) who far outnumber the foreign tourists.  Clouds blocked the views down and the north end is a construction site.  Chowrasta is a pedestrian only area, as is the walk down a gentle slope along the Mall to Clubside, so called because the late 19th century Planters' Club is situated just above it.  A colonial era clocktower stands a little further.  The ridge upon which Darjeeling sits was discovered in 1828 by a couple of British army officers who decided it would be a good place for a sanatorium, allowing patients to escape the heat of the plains.  Britain rented it from the Choygal (king) of Sikkim (it was later ceded to Britain) and the town was established in 1835, getting its name from the Dorje Ling ("Place of the Thunderbolt") Monastery that was located there.  The Hill Cart Road up from the plains was completed in 1839 and tea growing introduced at about the same time.  By 1857 Darjeeling had about 10,000 inhabitants, mostly Nepalis working on the tea plantations.  The little railroad was completed in 1881.  I had dinner that night at a Tibetan restaurant and had a good hot shower at my hotel before bed.

It was mostly cloudy the next day, though the sun poked through occasionally.  I walked through Chowrasta and along the Mall before breakfast.  A guy at breakfast told me he had been here ten days and it had been cloudy and rainy all the time.  It is supposed to be less rainy this time of year, until late May or early June.  After breakfast I walked up to Observatory Hill, just above Chowrasta, site of the original Dorje Ling Monastery.  The monastery has moved and the hilltop now houses a combination Buddhist and Hindu temple, with lots of prayer flags fluttering in the wind.  I spent some time at that colorful spot before walking down to the colonial Windemere Hotel on the ridge between Observatory Hill and Chowrasta.  The Windemere is a wonderful old hotel with old furniture and old photos and letters displayed on the walls.  It has a genuine colonial ambiance.  They didn't seem to mind me wandering all around and looking at everything.

Leaving the Windemere, I walked further away from Chowrasta on a lane that led to the now closed and derelict colonial Gymkhana Club and St. Andrew's Church, all locked up.  A little further on is the former residence of the British Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, now reserved for the Indian Governor of West Bengal and not open to the public.  While walking along, I could hear the May Day speech being given on Hill Cart Road by the politician who heads the Gorkhaland local authority.  The inhabitants of these hills, mostly Nepalis, want their own state, but for the time being have settled for a semi-autonomous local authority.

The sky cleared a bit after lunch and I could see the ridge to the east, with a long drop to the valley below.  I walked down a narrow lane to the 19th century Bhutia Busty Monastery, moved from Observatory Hill.  The friendly old monk in charge showed me around before I began the steep climb back up, a rise of 300 or 400 feet.  A red uniformed band was playing in the Chowrasta bandstand at the end of the afternoon.  That night fog swirled through Darjeeling's narrow lanes.

Sun streaming through my windows woke me up the next morning at 6:30, but soon the sunshine was gone.  After a big and delicious breakfast at a very friendly and popular restaurant oriented to westerners, I walked northwest down Darjeeling's ridge to the Happy Valley Tea Estate, a drop of about 300 feet to the top of the plantation, and then another 300 foot drop through the tea gardens to the factory.  Twenty or so women were engaged in plucking leaves and tossing them into the baskets on their backs as I descended.  With a group of Canadians, I got an excellent tour of the factory, which unfortunately was not in operation as the previous day (May Day) had been a holiday and so no tea was picked.  I later read in the newspaper that tea workers get 90 rupees, about $1.60, a day and that there are 55,000 of them, plus another 15,000 employed at the height of the season.  The explanation of tea picking and processing was very interesting.  Happy Valley is the highest in elevation of the more than 80 Darjeeling tea estates.  In fact, there are photos of it covered with snow.  Except for what it sells at the factory, all it produces is exported, including to Harrod's in London. 

In the early afternoon the sun came out, though there were still many clouds.  I took off my jacket as I walked up through the tea estate and back to Darjeeling and to the somethat disappointing Botanical Gardens below Hill Cart Road.  I walked through narrow lanes from the gardens back to Hill Cart Road and then to the train station to check schedules.  A sign at the station gave the elevation at 6812 feet.  Five old and very small steam engines were on display in a nearby shed.  While I was there, the tourist train that makes several daily runs to Ghoom and back arrived.  It was pulled by a diesel locomotive and had only two small carriages.  I visited a nearby Hindu temple with a view of the Happy Valley Tea Estate and then watched as the 4 p.m. tourist train, this time with four carriages, left for Ghoom.

From the train station I made the steep climb up to Clubside, passing the 1921 post office, an excellent Tibetan curio shop, a fancy tea shop and the clocktower.  I spent some time looking around the somewhat shabby Planters' Club.  It clearly has seen better days.  The old furniture looked worn and the deer heads and tiger heads and skins on the walls moth eaten.  There are some interesting old photos, though, including one of the members in 1916.  Also on display is a World War I Maxim gun and two oxygen tanks from the 1924 Everest Expedition, which started from the Planters' Club.  A plaque listed club presidents.  The first Indian name dates from 1971, while the last British name from 1982.  From the porch of the Planters' Club I watched the sun disappear into massive clouds to the west.  The main part of Darjeeling ridge faces to the west, with a wide and very low valley down below.

I was awakened the next morning by the sun at 5:30.  The sky was clear and shortly after 6:30 I made my way to an viewpoint north of Observatory Hill and just a short walk from Chowrasta and was pleased to see a magnificent view of snow covered Kanchenjunga (also spelled Kangchendzonga), the world's third highest peak at over 28,000 feet.  It is about 40 miles north, on the Nepal-Sikkim border.  A small cloud was drifting off the peak, but other than that the entire ridge of snow covered peaks on either side of Kanchenjunga was cloudless.  I just sat and watched for a while, and then walked to other great viewpoints along the lane rounding Observatory Hill.

After breakfast I walked down again to the Happy Valley factory, as I wanted to see it in operation.  Inside was a nice, warm tea smell and I watched the machines rolling the tea leaves and other sifting them.  About 11:30 the woman tea pickers (the pickers are all women while the other tea workers are all men) tramped into the factory in their rubber boots to have their morning's pluckings weighed.  That was fun to watch, with the weighed sacks of bright green tea leaves then dumped into a pile on the floor before being gathered up into big bags and spread out on the long withering beds, where they spend 18 hours losing much of their moisture as cool and then warm air is blown below them.  Some tea remained on the floor and it was somewhat amusing to see tea bound for Harrod's being swept up off the floor and deposited on the withering beds.

From the tea estate I walked up to Hill Cart Road and then away from Darjeeling until I reached a 19th century cemetery, with laundry drying on the grass next to some of the tombstones. I walked up the steep slope of the cemetery to get to another lane that led to the zoo.  Inside the zoo is the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, formerly headed by Tenzing Norgay, and its museum.  The displays included much of his mountaineering gear and much information on Everest and other expeditions, including lots of photos and newspaper articles.  The spot where Norgay was cremated in 1986 at the age of 72 is just outside the museum.  The zoo itself was very interesting, with decent enclosures and some wonderful animals, including colorful pheasants, red pandas, black bears, Himalayan wolves, tigers, leopards, a black panther (same species as a leopard, but black), and even rare clouded leopards and snow leopards.  They were quite active in the late afternoon and I spent quite a lot of time watching a huge tiger pace maybe ten or fifteen feet from me.  I saw the wolves being fed.  Half chickens were tossed to them, which they devoured, or you might even say wolfed down, in about three or four bites.

It had clouded up and a cold wind came up in the late afternoon.  From the zoo I walked back to Darjeeling after 5, stopping at a level part of the ridge called the Shrubbery, which I have to admit only reminded me of Monty Python.  There are views of Kanchenjunga from the Shrubbery, but by late afternoon it was completely cloud covered.  For dinner that night I went to Glenary's, a popular old colonial era restaurant on the Mall.  It has a fireplace and many old photos on the walls of its big dining hall.  The menu had roast beef and french fries on it, and I was tempted to order it, but didn't.

The next morning I was up about 6.  The sky was sunny, but Kanchenjunga was cloud covered.  About 9:30 I began a walk along a quiet road on the eastern side of Darjeeling's ridge that climbed to Ghoom, four miles away.  Along the way I had hazy views down the valley below and across to the ridge leading to Tiger Hill at about 8500 feet elevation.  When its clear, there are great views from Tiger Hill of Kanchenjunga and many other peaks, including Everest far to the west.  I passed the Allobari Monastery, undergoing reconstruction, on the way.  I got to Ghoom (also spelled Ghum, but I prefer Ghoom and most signs have it that way) about 11 and walked through town, with the two foot wide train tracks right along the road, to the train station, with a sign saying it is 7407 feet in elevation.  The tourist train was at the station and there is an old steam engine on display next to the station.  I went into the interesting museum on the top floor of the station and spent quite a bit of time in there.  There were some great old photos and maps.  It turns out Mark Twain was here in the 1890's and descended the rail line back to the plains in some sort of non-motorized carriage with only a hand brake.  He wrote that the trip was the most exciting day of his life. Maybe the most dangerous, too.

The sky had clouded up by 12:30 as I began the descent to Darjeeling, about five miles away via Hill Cart Road.  Just below the train station a side road leads to a monastery built in 1850.  The young monk with the keys had to be summoned from a cricket game just behind the monastery.  Inside is a beautiful large statue of the Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of the future.  Clouds were beginning to swirl up the hills as I left.  I passed an ugly modern monastery right on Hill Cart Road with the teenage monks playing cricket in a little courtyard in front.  The train again passed as I walked down Hill Cart Road, busy with traffic, to another monastery, this one very nice.  Inside was another giant Buddha and very interesting paintings on the walls, including topless women, which I can't remember seeing in any other Buddhist monastery.  It was getting cold as I reached Batastia Loop, where the rail line makes a 360 degree turn at the end of a ridge spur on its way down to Darjeeling.  Inside the loop is the Gurkha War Memorial, with an obelisk, a statue of a soldier, and a list of local soldiers killed in action.  As I understand it, the Nepalis who served, and still serve, in the British Army, and in the Indian Army nowadays, are called Gurkhas, while the Nepalis who live in India are called Gorkhas.  My hotel owner says the pronunciation is the same.  It is just that Gurkha is the traditional spelling for soldiers, for historical reasons.  My hotel owner said Nepalis in Nepal are not called Gorkhas, but Nepalis.  Of course, not all citizens of Nepal are of the Nepali ethnicity.

Further down the road, about halfway from Ghoom to Darjeeling, is another, very large monastery right off the road.  When I arrived it was crowded with Tibetans and maybe other people, probably including Lepchas, the original inhabitants of Sikkim, and Sikkimese.  Lepchas and Sikkimese are descendents of Tibetans who emigrated centuries ago.  Signs welcomed the monastery's young leader back from his graduation from a university in Bhutan.  I remember the name of the university, Tango, only because I wondered if the dance instructors came from Argentina.  The young abbot, or whatever he is, was speaking while seated on a brightly decorated chair in front of the main door of the monastery, with hundreds of people in the courtyard in front and on stairs and landings.  I could only get a glimpse from a stairway.  Soon it began to rain and I ducked into a small prayer hall where two old monks were sitting and using straps to revolve great big prayer wheels.  The one closest to me motioned me to sit in a nearby chair, so I did so and relaxed while watching them patiently revolve their prayers wheels.

When I left, the rain had stopped and the ceremony was breaking up.  The young abbot (I think he was perhaps a reincarnation, as there was a photo of him as a little kid in the prayer hall where I had sat, along with a photo of an old man with the same name, except with a "I" after the old man's name and a "II" after the boy's name) was walking through the crowds under a red umbrella held by a monk.  He carried a silver and gold object and pressed it against the heads of those gathered in front of him.  He smiled often.  Other monks in red accompanied him, one with a yellow hat, others with red hats.  Two other monks stationed on the veranda of the main prayer hall continuously blew horns, with their cheeks quite puffed up.  The young graduate patiently made many rounds of the courtyard, blessing everyone who came up.  The crowd thinned out, with some leaving the monastery courtyard to go home and some entering the big prayer hall.  The ones entering the prayer hall left thin white shawls on the seat in front of the main door, where the young graduate had sat and spoke, and on one of the five big statues at the back of the hall.  Many in the crowd were beautifully dressed in new traditional clothing.

As the young graduate finished his rounds and left, I went into the big prayer hall, dedicated by the Dalai Lama in 1993.  It is a beautifully painted hall.  The five big statues along the back wall include one of a woman with one breast bare.  I wandered around as the crowds left and monks began to file in to begin their evening prayers.  They filled the hall quickly and began beating drums, clanging cymbals, and blowing horns before commencing chanting.  I watched for a while, the only non-monk in the hall, before leaving.  However, it was now cold and raining outside, so I stood on the veranda and listened to the monks through the main door, which had a canvas covering discouraging entry.  The rain stopped at about a quarter to 6 and I began the two and a half mile walk back to Darjeeling.  It took me about an hour, with lots of traffic on the road, but at least it didn't rain any more.  I got back to my hotel just as it got dark.

It was cloudy when I got up the next morning at 6.  There was little sun in the morning and some rain in the afternoon.  I spent several hours in an internet cafe.  In mid afternoon I looked for something to eat, but the restaurants and other shops were closing because a political party had called a strike after a fight between its members and the members of another political party in the nearby town of Mirik.  The shop owners close down or face vandalism.  In the open market with stalls along one of the little lanes coming off of Chowrasta I was able to buy a plate of ten vegetable momos (Tibetan dumplings) for 20 rupees and they were pretty good.  After lunch I sat in my hotel room, with windows looking out over the fogged in valley east of Darjeeling's ridge, as the rain came down, with thunder and lightning.  About 5 I went to one of the few restaurants open, in a hotel, and had a poor dinner that took about an hour and a half to arrive.  It was rainy and cold as I walked back to my hotel.

The next day was foggy and cloudy and I spent most of the day in an internet cafe.  The strike had been lifted.  As every morning, I had had a delicious breakfast at a little restaurant very popular with foreigners.  For 120 rupees you get eggs, fried tomatoes, cheese, crunchy hash browns, and two pieces of thick brown bread.  For lunch I got some more momos at the market, but this time chicken ones, six for 30 rupees, followed by an ear of roasted corn on the cob for 10 rupees.  For dessert I ate a chocolate brownie from Glenary's Bakery which cost me as much as the rest of my lunch.  We had short intense rainstorm about 4 and it was drippy and wet thereafter.  I had a good dinner at Glenary's, the colonial era restaurant over the bakery, and walked back to my hotel about 9 through thick fog and misty rain.

The next day was cloudy and cold.  I've been told it has been this way for about six weeks.  It is usually somewhat cloudy in April and May, but not as bad as it has been.  Still, everyone arriving from India's hot plains, where it is now regularly over 100 degrees, is happy with the cool weather, if not the lack of views of the mountains.  I read somewhere that the highest temperature ever recorded in Darjeeling in 80 degrees.  I spent most of the day in an internet cafe with a few walks around town and had another dinner at Glenary's.  After dinner, walking back to my hotel, I could see lights in the deep valley to the east of Darjeeling's ridge.  That valley had been filled with clouds for days.

And the next morning it was fogged in again.  The day was foggy and cold.  About 10:30 I made a steep descent, more than 500 feet, through the fog on a narrow lane, partly washed away in one spot, to the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Center, established in 1959.  I spent quite a bit of time walking around and watching friendly Tibetan women spinning wool (on spining wheels made of bicycle wheels) and making carpets on looms.   A storeroom contained hundreds of balls of wool colored with both vegetable and chemical dyes.  The photographic exhibition was closed, as it was being repainted, but there were some posters around, including a few gruesome ones showing some of self-immolations of Tibetans in protest against the Chinese.

Rather than make the steep ascent the way I had come, I walked down another 150 feet to the road, called the Lebong Cart Road as it is the extension of Hill Cart Road from Darjeeling to the former horse race track at Lebong, a flat space on a spur below Darjeeling.  You can see the race track from Darjeeling when it is clear.  I walked back to Darjeeling on the road, a longer but easier route that took me an  hour and a half or so.  There wasn't much traffic until I got to the area called North Point, the northern end of the ridge.  Shortly after North Point, I could climb up to the lane leading to the zoo and took that back to Chowrasta, passing the zoo and the Shrubbery.  I had another chicken momo lunch about 3 and after 4 walked through Chowrasta and along the Mall to Clubside.  The red uniformed band was again playing in the bandstand in Chowrasta.  There is a great book store in an old colonial era building on Chowrasta.  Most of the buildings,though, are ugly modern ones.  I ate dinner again at Glenary's, with a very foggy walk back to my hotel afterward.

When I got up about 6 the next morning I could see down into the deep valley to the east through the swirling clouds.  The sun didn't make much of an appearance, but I went up to the roof of the hotel and could see a bit of the Kanchenjunga's snowy ridge.  The deep valley west of Darjeeling's ridge was also visible through the clouds.  After ten or fifteen minutes, the clouds swirled in and erased the view to the east, and eventually to the west.  I had another wonderful breakfast and then walked down to the train station and bought a ticket (the last one available, the ticket seller told me) on the narrow gauge railroad for the next morning to Kurseong, as far as it goes since the 2010 landslide.  About four times a day, a train, called the "Joy Ride," goes to Ghoom and back, with stops at Ghoom and at the Batastia Loop, but I preferred the longer journey, which cost only 30 rupees compared to 335 for the Joy Ride.  I walked back up to the Mall and got my required Sikkim permit and spent the rest of the day at an internet cafe and walking around in the drippy fog.

The next morning I left at 10:15 on the train to Kurseong.  As usual, the sky was cloudy as we left.  The train had only two carriages, one first class and one second class.  Both were full and my seat in the 28 seat second class carriage was fine.  I lucked out, too, getting a window seat on the side of the train best for views.  I thoroughly enjoyed the 20 mile trip to Kurseong, which took a little under three hours.  It took us about half an hour to rise the 600 feet over five miles to Ghoom, where we stopped for five minutes.  Some passengers got off at Ghoom and the train was never full thereafter.  Most, but not all, of the passengers were tourists.  Except for two Koreans who got off at Ghoom, I was the only foreigner.  From Ghoom we made the descent to Kurseong at 4800 feet, making brief stops at two other stops on the way.  The sky was cloudy all the way, but I enjoyed what views we had and the slow pace of the train.  People on the streets in the towns would spot me and smile or wave, or both.  In the towns the little train rumbled right past shops.  I almost could have reached out and touched the merchandise.  Nearing Kurseong we had some wider views, especially down the deep valley northwest of Kurseong.

We arrived at 1 at the station at the southern end of town after passing through the town strung out along the narrow highway.  From the station I walked a little over a half mile up a gentle rise to Eagle's Crag, a view point looking both north over a ridge jutting out west from Kurseong and to the valley beyond and south down the widening valley to the plains.  I think I could see the outskirts of Siliguri thirty miles away.  The sky was cloudy, but the clouds weren't clinging to the town, as has often been the case in Darjeeling.  I walked back to the station and took another road heading down towards the western ridge and stopped at old St. Andrew's Church, where about thirty women were singing and praying.

I had planned to take a share jeep back to Darjeeling, but it was almost three o'clock and I decided to walk back to the station and see if there were seats on the 3 o'clock train back to Darjeeling.  There were, so I bought a first class one for 185 rupees, more than six times the second class fare.  A jeep ride back would have taken half the time, but I enjoyed the train.  The trip back took just less than three hours, with a fifteen minute stop at Ghoom where two more carriages were attached.  It took just over two hours, with two very brief stops, to travel the fifteen miles from Kurseong to Ghoom, so we were traveling at a blistering seven and a half miles per hour.  My carriage was never full and the ride was comfortable and interesting.  The sun even made a very brief appearance just north of Kurseong.  We hit some fog maybe 500 feet above Kurseong, but it lifted before settling in again near Ghoom.  Coming down from Ghoom, especially at the 360 degree turn at the Batastia Loop, at the end of a spur, we had great views towards Darjeeling and the valley to its west.  Clouds filled the sky, but you could just barely make out the lower reaches of Kanchenjunga to the north.  The view fogged in as we approached Darjeeling and it was raining when we arrived just before 6.  As the rain came down fairly heavily, I made the steep climb to the Mall under my umbrella and ate an early dinner at Glenary's.

April 23-29, 2013: Calcutta, Murshidabad, Malda, Gaur, Pandua and Siliguri

My flight from Port Blair to Calcutta left shortly before noon on the 23rd.  I couldn't get a window seat, but from my aisle seat I did get a view of Port Blair and Ross Island shortly after takeoff.  We soon were in clouds, probably as we crossed over the main chain of the Andamans on our way to Calcutta.  The flight took two hours.  After landing, the toothless old man next to me had great difficulty getting out of his seat belt.  He couldn't figure out how to undo it, so he opened it as wide as he could and then tried to get his legs through it.  I noticed it as soon as his granddaughter (I think) in the seat next to him and she undid it for him.

Calcutta airport has a brand new modern terminal, opened only about a month earlier.  It was quite cold inside.  I took the hour long bus ride from the airport to the city center.  The last two times I've taken that bus, after flights from Bangkok, the first thing I've noticed is all the garbage along the streets.  This time I didn't, no doubt because I'd been in India over five months and am quite used to seeing garbage everywhere.  I checked into the same friendly hotel I've stayed in during previous stays in Calcutta and then walked to a nearby bookshop.  Calcutta felt relatively cool compared to Port Blair, though I suppose the temperature was in the 90's.  I got trapped in the bookstore when a big rainstorm hit.  I didn't have my umbrella and so tried to wait it out.  It got dark and the rain continued.  During a slight decrease I made a run for it and got a little wet on my way to a barber shop near my hotel, where I got a much needed haircut.  The rain had stopped by the time I was finished and the evening felt cool.  I meant to go to bed early, but stayed up reading newspapers in the hotel lobby.  I'd seen hardly any newspapers during my month long stay in the Andamans.

The next morning I walked past the busy street side chicken market, and then the fruit and vegetable market a block or so north, on my way to the bus station to check on buses to Murshidabad.  I came back for breakfast and then took a taxi to Sealdah Railway Station and bought a ticket for the 11:15 train north to Murshidabad.  A large crowd had gathered on the platform as the train pulled in, with young men jumping into the open doors of the still moving empty train as it pulled in.  I waited till it almost came to a stop and muscled my way in, getting a window seat.  The train was crowded, with three people seated on seats made for two, and hot, though there was a fan over me, which helped.  We left on time heading north through Calcutta and its suburbs and satellite towns.  It took about an hour and a half until we reached the green countryside, with rice, bananas, and many other crops.  My seatmates were pretty disgusting, hoicking and spitting all the time.  I noticed that almost all persons in the carriage were young men.  We passed through several cities and towns, including Plassey (as the sign at the train station spelled it; the official spelling is now Palashi).  Plassey was the site of the 1757 battle in which Robert Clive of the East India Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal, leading to British rule in Bengal and eventually all of India.

The train reached Murshidabad, 120 miles north of Calcutta and former capital of Bengal under the Nawabs, at 4:30.  Surprising to me, there was no station and we got off in what seemed a rural area.  Murshidabad is now just a small town, with something like 40,000 people instead of the million or so it might have had in the mid 18th century, but I still expected a train station.  I found a bicycle rickshaw to take me the couple of miles or so to the hotel I wanted to stay in on the Bhagirathi River next to the former palace of the Nawabs.  I got one of the nicest rooms, with a balcony overlooking the wide river and a view of the palace a bit downstream.  The hotel is right on the river, with a very nice garden all around it.  I watched the sun disappear into the clouds over the trees on the other side of the river just after 5 and then walked to the palace complex just downriver.

The huge palace was built in 1829-1837, well after the Nawabs had become figureheads under British rule, and is in what is called Italinate style.  It's facade is more than 400 feet long, with columns at the top of the stairs leading up to the main door.  Two lions stand guard at the base of the stairs in front of plaques in English and Arabic script.  The palace is called the Hazarduari, meaning "thousand doors."  Apparently, it has a thousand doors, real and fake, inside and out.  Across a wide plaza is an even longer building, the white painted Imambara, housing the tomb of the Nawab who built the palace.  The buildings face each other rather than the river.  There is a small and pretty multi-domed mosque on the river and another small domed building between the Hazarduari and the Imambara.  A European style clock tower also stands between the two big buildings.  The buildings were closed, although quite a few Indians were strolling around the big open space.  It was humid, with no breeze.  I strolled into the adjacent town, with newer buildings among ruins of mosques, gateways and other buildings.  Families were living in one of the ruined buildings.  A muezzin began the evening call to prayer just after 6, which must have been just after sunset.  I walked back to the hotel and met the very friendly owner.  He told me he built the hotel 20 years ago.  I appeared to be the only guest.  He showed me around his garden just at dark, showing me jasmine, lemon grass, and a bright orange flower.  I had dinner at a simple restaurant in town and had a not very good thali.  My bed had a good mosquito net and a fan, and I opened wide the windows to the veranda, but it still was hot when I went to bed.  It cooled off over the night.

The next morning I awoke about 5 and went out on the balcony to look at the morning mist over the river.  The Bhagirathi flows from the Ganges, which is about 10 or 15 miles to the north.  Bangladesh is just beyond.  The Bhagirathi eventually flows into the Hooghly, which also flows from the Ganges and passes by Calcutta on its way to the Bay of Bengal.  I think they are both considered distributaries, rather than tributaries, of the Ganges.  I went back to bed and got up for good about 6 to sit on the balcony in the morning cool.  The wide river flows quite rapidly.  Boatmen came downriver from the little village a little upstream.  I walked to the palace grounds in the morning sunshine.  It was already getting hot.  There was no wind.  People were exercising on the palace grounds and one couple were even doing yoga at the top of the steps to the Hazarduari.  Gardeners were trimming hedges.  I walked a short distance along the river to a newer, smaller, but decrepit palace,dating from the 1890's I think.  It was right on the river and had a couple of European style statues in front.  It was cooler along the river, with flowering trees, orange and purple.  I walked further downstream, past another small riverside mosque and the remains of what may be walls of a former fort until I reached a large, two story, white gateway just inland from the river.  Just beyond it was an overturned truck on its side, full of sand.  Men were shoveling out the sand while one man worked on the undercarriage, draining gas.

I walked back to the hotel to find the breakfast I had ordered the night before had already been prepared and was cold.  So I ate a cold omelet and buttered toast, but did get a hot cup of tea.  After breakfast I sat on my balcony until about 10.  There was now a slight breeze off the river and I watched the birds, butterflies and squirrels in the garden and the boats on the river.  Utpal, the friendly owner, came by and I chatted with him for a while.  He took me on his motorcycle about a mile east of town to the ruins of the large 1723 Katra Mosque, made of bricks with two remaining very thick minarets.  The Nawab who built it is buried under the steps to the courtyard, a sign of his humility.  I walked around the grounds and then walked back to town, stopping at an even more ruined mosque, much smaller, with bamboo growing in front of it.  Its domed roof was mostly gone.  People along the way were friendly and I arrived at the Hazarduari about noon.  It is now a museum, and air conditioned, and I spent a couple of hours inside.  I didn't count the doors, but I did enjoy the architecture and the collection of memorabilia.  It is three stories high, but you spend almost all your time on the middle story, with a long banquet hall and a central durbar hall with a throne.  On display were all sorts of weapons, a palanquin made of ivory and sedan chairs made of ivory and silver.  There were lots of paintings, including all the Nawabs from about 1700 and several Britons, including Cornwallis, with wide black eyebrows under thinning gray hair.

I had another poor thali lunch, though it had some fish, and then walked downriver to the newer palace.  People were living in the ruins of its backside.  I climbed the stairway at the back to the open corridor above the rooms where people now live, disturbing a pack of dogs that had had the area to themselves before my arrival. I also explored the ruins of another large building further behind the palace.  I walked a bit more downriver, past the large, two story gateway, and then returned to my hotel about 4:30.  I sat on my balcony, then looked around the garden, and finally found a place to sit right on the river until dark.  Utpal came by and I chatted with him.  He sent one of his workers to buy me a small watermelon, which was delicious.  Three of his friends showed up for their nightly game of bridge in the lobby of the hotel and I went off to another unsatisfactory thali dinner.  A full moon was rising to the east.

I slept well and got up at six the next morning and sat on my balcony until I went down for breakfast 15 minutes before the 8 o'clock scheduled time for my breakfast.  Again, it was already prepared, but fortunately for me still hot.  Afterward, I sat on the river and enjoyed the breeze off the water.  Utpal came by about 9 and at 9:30 took me by motorcycle a bit more than a mile north to Katgola, the mansion and garden of a rich Jain merchant.  I wandered around the grounds, also containing a temple and the ruins of another large building, and visited the mansion, filled with old furniture and photos.  I think the mansion, four stories high, must date from the late 1800's.  It had chandeliers, a billiard table and a library with encyclopedias, multi-volume histories, a book on the 1922 attempt to summit Everest, and volumes of the works of Shakespeare, Ruskin, Scott, and Thackeray.  There were quite a few photos of the descendant of the original builder who was a Congress party official in the 50's and 60's.

From Katgola I walked back to Murshidabad, visiting several sights along the way, although what I enjoyed most was seeing the everyday life of rural Bengal.  People were very friendly.  They don't see too many foreign tourists here.  Utpal showed me his foreigner registration book and I doubt he has had more than 50 foreigners staying at his hotel over the past three years.  On the way back to Murshidabad I stopped at a small and uninteresting home of a former financier named Jagat Sett and the much larger and more interesting palace, filled with colorful idols, of a former collector awarded the title Raja Bahadur.  A little further on I explored the family cemetery of Mir Jafar and his descendants, including his four sons (three of which succeeded him as Nawab, and later descendants, recent Nawabs now resting in colorful tile tombs of pink and green.  Mir Jafar betrayed his nephew the Nawab Shiraj-ud-Daula at the battle of Plassey, helping the British win the battle.  Shiraj-ud-Daula was assassinated after the battle and Mir Jafar became Nawab.  His two wives were also buried near him, but in walled tombs.  I asked the caretaker why their tombs had walls, and he said he didn't know the English word but it was because of purdah.  The day was hot and sunny, with mango trees and rice paddies along the way, and I passed by the ruins of another mosque before arriving back in Murshidabad for another desultory lunch about 1:30.

The sky darkened in the afternoon, with a few drops of rain.  I walked through town for quite a way until I reached a ferry crossing to the other side.  The crossing on the motorized, bamboo floored ferry cost all of two rupees. I watched an approaching ferry offload two very heavily laden bicycle rickshaws with towering loads of jute, maybe 15 feet high.  I crossed myself, sharing the small ferry, without rails, with a car and many people, including a lot of uniformed students heading home after school.  On the far side, bicycle rickshaws loaded with jute were waiting for passage across the river.

I started walking to Khosbagh, the garden tomb of Shiraj-ud-Daula, and was soon offered a lift by a teenage schoolgirl on her bicycle.  I was a little dubious, but sat Indian style on the rack on the back of the bike as the strong girl pedaled us along the bumpy road.  My perch seemed precarious, especially when cars came by and she swerved to the lip of the asphalt.  I was afraid of falling backward and conking my head. I did get bumped off just as we were arriving at the walled garden.  I thanked her and said goodbye before going inside. The small building inside the garden apparently was built to house the grandfather of Shiraj-ud-Daula, and they both are buried there, along with other family members.  A small mosque sits at the far end of the garden, behind the building with the tombs.  I looked around and then walked back to the ferry landing, a 20 minute walk as the sun was reappearing.  People were quite friendly on the way, seemingly surprised to see me.

I reached the ferry crossing and spent about 45 minutes there before crossing.  It was quite interesting to watch the jute loaded cycle rickshaws and some motorized small vehicles also loaded with jute getting on the ferry.  Several straining men had to brace the overloaded rickshaws as they skittered down the steep decline and onto the rickety ferry.  I also watched a woman shampooing her long hair in the river.  I finally crossed about 5, sharing the ferry with another overloaded rickshaw and only a few people.  The almost toothless boatman seemed pleased to have me take his photograph.  It took me about half an hour to walk back to my hotel on a humid, windless, late afternoon.  I watched the sun disappear into the clouds over the trees on the other side of the river just after I got back and then talked with Utpal until his 7 o'clock bridge game.  The game finished about 8 and he dropped me off by motorcycle at a fairly good restaurant in town on his way home.  I walked back along the river under a full moon after dinner. 

The next morning I was up about 6:30 and sat on the balcony until breakfast.  Afterward, I sat in the garden and talked with Utpal until about 10, when I checked out and took a share jeep south to the big city of Behrampore, a 45 minute trip.  The driver leaned on his horn almost the whole way.  At 11:30 I left on a hot and crowded bus bound for Malda to the north.  The scenery along the way was flat with ugly development along the crowded and bumpy highway.  I did see rice growing.  After about 3 hours we crossed over the very wide Ganges via the Farraka Barrage, built to control the downstream flow of the Ganges.  Both the highway and the railroad cross the river via the barrage.  Downstream are big white sandbanks in the middle of the river, while upstream there are none.  At places along the barrage you look down and see roiling water, where water was being released through the barrage.  More than an hour after crossing the Ganges we reached Malda.  I took a cycle rickshaw to an okay hotel on the dusty main road.  The afternoon was very humid.

I had come to Malda to see the old Bengali capitals of Gaur and Pandua.  About 8 I found the bus heading to Gaur, about ten miles south, but it was incredibly small, with almost no leg room.  So I hired a taxi to take me there and back for 600 rupees, about $11. Bengal had Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms before the 13th century Muslim conquest.  The ruins at Gaur are all from the Muslim period.  We stopped first at a large mosque built in 1526 of brick with stone facing.  Nearby are the remains of a five story brick gateway to the city, built in the early 15th century.  Designs are on the bricks and the walls adjacent to the gate are now nothing but dirt mounds.  Mango trees, heavy with mangoes, were everywhere.  I was told June is when they ripen and are harvested.  We drove on to the over 80 foot high Firuz Minar, made of brick with a few remaining tiles.  A huge banyan tree stood nearby, full of noisy birds.  At the next stop were the ruins of another mosque and a domed mausoleum, all of brick.  A large gateway nearby had some colorful tiles remaining.  We walked through a large grove of mango trees to the excavations of the old palace and the remaining portions of very high brick city walls.  Next, we drove through another gate further south to two more very nice mosques, the final one with many remaining colorful tiles, both inside and outside.  We were only about two miles from the Bangladesh border when we turned back to return to Malda.  Gaur was sacked in 1537 and abandoned after a plague in 1575.  I got back to Malda about noon.

At 2 I took a bus north about ten miles to Pandua, first visiting the ruins of the enormous Adina Masjid (Mosque) built in 1364.  It is said to be the largest mosque in Bengal and one of the largest in India.  The grassy quadrangle is surrounded by 88 brick arches.  The main wall is brick and stone, with the stone mihrabs (prayer niches) carved with beautiful designs.  Inside the long prayer hall, only about half of which still has a roof, is a large raised platform for the king and his family.  I walked all around and then followed the little road that led past farmhouses with friendly people to the Eklakhi Mausoleum, so called because it cost 100,000 rupees to build.  It was built in 1412 of brick with stone lintels with the remains of Hindu gods.  Nearby is the Qtub Shahi Mosque, dating from 1582.  I walked back the way I came and stopped to watch some women making bidi, the cheap cigarettes sold all over India.  The friendly women seemed to enjoy having their photos taken, and enjoyed even more seeing the photos.  Along the way back, children were playing cricket, grain and cow dung were drying on the road, and people were relaxing after a day's work.  Everybody was very friendly and I think I enjoyed the walk more than the ruins.  I caught a bus back to Malda about 6 and had to stand on the half hour trip.

Shortly before 9 the next morning I left Malda on the long, 8 hour bus ride north to Siliguri, 160 miles away.  The window seats had little leg room, so I took an aisle seat on what became a very crowded and slow bus.  For the first half of the journey there was a lot of traffic on the poor road, with many stops and much horn blowing.  Once we reached a new four land highway we moved more rapidly.  The flat landscape was not at all scenic, with rice and corn and other crops and lots of ugly highway development.  Nearing Siliguri we passed through the narrow wedge, maybe 15 miles wide, between Nepal and Bangladesh and started to see some tea estates about 20 miles before Siliguri.  It was overcast most of the day, but with some sun.  It didn't seem quite as hot as previous days, with an occasional cool wind, probably coming down from the nearby Himalayas.  Siliguri, at about 400 feet elevation and with more than 700,000 people, is a transport center.  I think the people are largely Nepali.  Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who first climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary, has a prominent statue in town.  I found a decent hotel near the big bus station and looked forward to getting up into the mountains.

April 14-22. 2013: Port Blair and Little Andaman Island

On the 14th I was up just about sunrise and walked down the beach on Neil Island's north coast to the western tip of the island and then back to my hotel on a path through the trees.  I left Neil just before 9 on a ferry bound for Port Blair, a trip of almost two hours.  I checked into the hotel where I'd stayed before, had lunch and then spent the afternoon at what remains of Port Blair's Cellular Jail, built by the British around 1900 to house particularly dangerous political prisoners.  It originally had 693 cells in seven wings radiating from a guard tower, only three of which remain.  It is now a museum commemorating "freedom fighters" and was filled with Indian tourists.  I seemed to be the only westerner.  I spent about three hours there looking around.  Besides the cells, the guard tower and the gallows, there are photographic exhibits in some of the administrative halls.  Outside the jail there are statues honoring six prisoners who died on hunger strikes.  It seems the prisoners housed here were violent ones, the type India would classify as terrorists if they were fighting for the liberation of Kashmir as opposed to India.  The jail was shut down by the British in the 1930's, though the Japanese used it to imprison Indians during their occupation of the Andamans during World War II.  It seems they killed far more of their prisoners, Indians they suspected of loyalty to Britain, than the British did.  Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of the Indian National Army, the army formed of Indian prisoners of war that fought alongside the Japanese in Burma along the border with India, raised an Indian flag here during the war.  He is now a national hero, commemorated especially in West Bengal, as he was a Bengali.  He called himself  "Netaji."  "Neta" means "leader" while "ji" is an honorific, so it sounds an awful lot like der Fuhrer or il Duce.  It was very hot and humid that afternoon, much hotter than it had been when I was in Port Blair in March.

The next morning I took a ferry at 8:30 to Ross Island, only about half a mile from Port Blair.  This small island was the British administrative center and is covered with derelict old buildings from the colonial era.  I spent the whole day there walking around and exploring the ruins, plus a very few restored buildings.  The atmospheric overgrown buildings included the arcaded "Subordinates' Club," the Presbyterian Church, the Commissioner's Bungalow, and many others, all covered in vines and roots.  Some of the ruined buildings have fig trees growing on them and are covered with masses of roots.  The island hosts many huge trees and many coconut palms, all of which have numbers, up to almost 2000, painted on them.  There are also relatively tame spotted deer, peacocks and peahens and squirrels.  A cemetery has graves from the 1860's. There are also some Japanese World War II bunkers and a small museum with interesting photos from the colonial era.

The day was sunny and hot, with great views through the forest towards the sea.  Lots of Indians were strolling around, but I seemed to be the only westerner.  Some very polite non-Indian looking children said hello and their parents told me they were tribal people, Nicobarese.  The father told me he works in Port Blair.  While there are less than 1000 tribal people, from four different tribes, left in the Andamans, there are about 30,000 in the Nicobars, almost all (there is one other tribe) Nicobaris who are Christian and have adapted well to modern life.  I took the last ferry back about 5 and had an okay fish dinner in an outdoor restaurant as darkness fell.  My room was hot that night at bedtime, with my thermometer registering 88 degrees inside the room.

I was up the next morning at first light, about 4:30, and headed to the port soon after 5 to buy a ticket for the ship leaving for Little Andaman Island south of Port Blair.  This ship was much larger than the other ferries I had taken, maybe 300 feet or more long, with several decks and even a helipad.  It left at 7, with tugs pulling it away from the dock.  I spent the almost seven hour voyage on the deck.  We rounded Ross Island and headed south along the east coast of South Andaman Island heading for Hut Bay on Little Andaman, about 75 miles south of Port Blair.  South of South Andaman we passed large Rutland Island, then the two small Cinque Islands and then the even smaller Sisters and Brothers Islands.  The long, low coastline of Little Andaman became visible and we cruised down its eastern coast with its long white beaches visible.  Little Andaman is the southernmost of the Andamans.  South of it is the Ten Degree Channel between Little Andaman and the northernmost of the Nicobars.  Little Andaman is the only island in the Andamans to suffer loss of life during the 2004 tsunami, with almost 100 killed.  At least that is the official toll; other estimates are higher.  The Nicobars suffered much more loss of life, with thousands killed.  In Kalipur in North Andaman the hotel owner had been on Havelock when the tsunami hit.  He said the sea first receded rapidly and the ensuing wave was chest high at his hotel on Havelock's east coast.

We docked at Hut Bay at 1:45 and the ship immediately refilled with passengers for the return trip to Port Blair.  There were only two other western tourists on the ship and the three of us took a crowded jeep to a little hotel about seven miles north from the dock at Hut Bay, near the little village of Netaji Nagar.  There are about 20,000 people living on Little Andaman, almost all migrants from the mainland.  About 100 tribal Onge people remain in reserves that you are not allowed to visit.  I checked into my comfortable hut, had a late lunch, and then walked across the road and through the trees for fewer than five minutes to the long beach, stretching all the way from the Hut Bay dock.  Little Andaman's beaches are known for their sand flies, so I quickly walked along the beach to its nearby northern headland, and then across that low but rocky headland to a much smaller beach lined with huge trees.  At its northern end is a pool fed by the tide backed by big black rocks.  Just beyond the pool is the headland between it and beautiful Butler Bay to the north.  I found a lookout over Butler Bay from the rocky headland and then a path through the big trees to the southern end of Butler Bay.  The tide was low.  It was getting late, so I headed back, but took a road inland from the small beach that led to Netaji Nagar village, with some very friendly people.  From there I took the main road back to my hotel, arriving just at 6 as darkness fell.  We had a delicious fish dinner that night, a grouper cooked in butter and garlic, with french fries and salad.  There were only four of us staying there, the Canadian-Argentine couple that had arrived on the ship with me, plus a young Norwegian guy who had been there for two weeks or more.

I was up the next morning about 5:30 and took a two hour walk, first along the beach, but the sand flies soon drove me off the beach into the trees and onto the road heading towards the dock. I enjoyed the morning walk along the quiet road, passing a school, three other small hotels, a few houses, and lots of areca palms, coconut palms and high padauk trees.  One stretch between the beach and the road was lined with casuarina (ironwood) trees.  I walked to a lagoon fed by the sea that is just alongside the road.  Salt water crocodiles are said to appear there, but I saw none.  I did see several birds.  Back at the hotel I had a leisurely breakfast and then went swimming in the very blue water off the beach near the hotel.  There were good waves, too.  In fact, Little Andaman is known for its surfing, particularly at the northern headland of Butler Bay.  Most of the very few tourists on the island seem to have come for the surfing.  Back at the hotel I read and had a late lunch before going for an afternoon swim.  From about 4 to 6 I took a walk, first along the road for over a mile to Butler Bay and then back along the beaches and headlands.

I slept late the next morning, until about 7:30.  I read, had breakfast, and took a swim.  I was going to rent a scooter to explore the island, but there was a gas shortage, so I rented a bicycle and biked south along the road and then inland to a waterfall about four miles away.  The waterfall was about 40 or 50 feet high, but not particularly scenic.  I took a path to the top and sat there for a while.  Very big flies, bigger than horse flies, bedeviled me both at the falls and on the bike trip into the forest on the way to the falls.  Swatting them didn't necessarily shoo them away;  you had to brush them away.  From the waterfall I biked an additional three miles to the town of Hut Bay, the island's largest village near the dock.  Uniformed men were playing cricket in the hot midday sun on a mostly grassy field, or perhaps I should say pitch.  A loudspeaker announced the action, but there didn't seem to be any spectators.  It took me a while to find the ferry ticket office, as it had no sign.  When I found it, I had a 40 minute wait as the one guy working there was out to lunch.  When he did arrive, he was not particularly helpful.  I biked back to the hotel, went swimming and then had something to eat.  From about 4:30 to 6 I took a walk on a road that head inland just north of our hotel.  It passed through an oil palm plantation and by an oil palm factory.  I met some very friendly little girls, living in the decrepit wooden housing near the factory.  There were lots of flies along the road.  In fact, insects were quite a problem on Little Andaman.  My legs had many sand fly and mosquito bites and flies were a problem during the day.

We had heard during the afternoon that the Norwegian guy had been in a motorcycle accident and was hospitalized.  It turned out it was quite serious. He required thirty plus stitches in his scalp and one arm and one leg were badly hurt.  Fortunately, he didn't seem to have any internal injuries.  He was evacuated by helicopter the next morning to Port Blair.

I was up the next morning about 5:30 and took a walk into the oil palm plantation for a little less than an hour.  Workers were arriving at the mill.  Back at the hotel I had breakfast, read and swam.  It was quite a lazy day, as we were all dispirited by the motorcycle accident.  From 4 to 6 I did take a walk to the pool at the little beach between the long Hut Bay Beach and Butler Bay.  I sat among the big trees there for a while and watched the sea grow dark.

The next morning I awoke about 4:30 and listened to the birds and the waves.  I got up about 6 and read for a while.  On Little Andaman I missed taking early morning walks along the beach, as the sand flies were particularly bad in the early morning.  After breakfast I caught a passing share jeep into Hut Bay and got off at the ferry ticket office.  There was a big crowd is a disorderly scrum at the little window, with men on one side and women on the other.  I pushed and shoved with everyone else for about an hour before I got my ticket for the next morning.  At the end, I reached my relatively long arm with my form requesting a ticket over others in front of me into the little ticket window, perhaps three inches square.  You could barely see the guys dispensing tickets inside.  After getting my ticket, I took a bus back to the hotel and went for a swim before spending most of the afternoon reading.  From about 4:30 to nightfall I walked among the big trees between the road and the beach.  Two of them had fallen, years ago.  Big waves crashed on the beach and a few cows were grazing below the big trees.  We had another very good fish dinner that night.  The previous two nights the dinners had not been particularly good, as the manager was dealing with the motorcycle accident.

The next morning I was up before 5 and caught a bus shortly after 5:30 to the port.  To my surprise, the ship listed on my ticket was not there, but a huge ship about 600 feet long had just arrived from Port Blair.  It disembarked its passengers, including only one western tourist.  About 200 of us boarded, with me the only westerner, and it turned out I could have avoided the scrum at the ticket office the day before and bought my ticket at the dock.  The ship, the Campbell Bay (named after a bay on Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost of the Nicobars), was brand new with a capacity for 1200 passengers.  It was almost 8 when we departed, almost an hour late.  I spent the first two hours on deck and watched Little Andaman go by.  I could see the big waves at the northern headland of Butler Bay.  The ship was air conditioned and I had a bunk in a room with ten or twenty beds.  I spent hardly any time in my room but sat in an empty lounge in a comfortable chair next to a big window.  I read and enjoyed the views.  About 2 we were off Ross Island, where we stopped dead in the water for a half hour or so, apparently waiting for the pilot to board.  It was a slow process getting to the dock and we finally docked at 3:30 not at the dock I had used for all other ferries, but at the dock used for the big ships to the mainland.  I took an auto rickshaw to my hotel and then checked about boats to Calcutta.  One was scheduled to leave in four days' time, but the previous ship had been delayed several days and my hotel owner was not very positive about the ship that was going to Calcutta, so I decided to fly.  It was very hot in Port Blair.

I bought my ticket to Calcutta the next morning for the next day.  It cost me $160, about four times the ship fare.  The day was another very hot one,  I walked to the anthropological museum and spent a couple of hours there.  It was very interesting, with some great tribal artifacts and photographs, including a photo of almost naked North Sentinelese standing just offshore the island and aiming bows and arrows at the photographer.  A signboard said the Andaman and Nicobar Islands had a population of 282,000 in 2001 (one of my guidebooks says 350,000 now, with over 100,000 in Port Blair), 23% speaking Bengali, 19% Tamil, 18% Hindi, 12% Telugu, 9% tribal languages, 9% Malayalam, 5% Ranchi languages, and 5% other languages.  The religious breakdown was 67% Hindu, 24% Christian, and 8% Muslim.  I didn't do much the rest of the day.  Internet connections were often very bad in the Andamans.  I did see a guy near the bus stand drinking from a cow.  He massaged the cow's udder and then put his mouth to it to drink.  I am certain that I have never seen that on a city street anywhere else.  In fact, I don't think I've seen that anywhere else, period.  Around 5 I walked to the esplanade fronting the sea before Ross Island.  Massive clouds filled the sky.  In the adjacent park were a tank, a missile, a warship gun and statues of Tagore and Bose.  A statue of Rajiv Gandhi stood on a dock out into the sea.  At 6 I went to the sound and light show at the Cellular Jail.  Hundreds of Indians attended and I didn't see any other westerners.  It wasn't very well done, I thought.  One of the heroes featured was Veer Savarkar, an extreme Hindu nationalist who was imprisoned in the jail for about ten years until 1921, when he renounced violence and was released from his life sentence.  He was a great opponent of Gandhi and gave his blessing to his assassin.  And he is now a national hero.  Port Blair's airport is named after him.

April 5-13, 2013: Long, Havelock and Neil Islands

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.

 

March 24 - April 4, 2013: Andaman Islands - Port Blair and North Andaman

I flew to Port Blair, the main city of the Andaman Islands, from Chennai on the morning of the 24th, a less than two hour flight that arrived shortly after noon.  It was quite easy to get to Chennai's airport on a suburban train that took about half an hour from Chennai's old Egmont Station to the airport.  We flew over Chennai's long beach and then over the  Bay of Bengal for over 700 miles, passing over reef fringed North Sentinel Island, just before landing on South Andaman Island a few miles south of Port Blair.  There are a few hundred tribal people living on North Sentinel and so far they have resisted almost all contact with outsiders, usually greeting them with a hail of arrows.

I found a hotel in Port Blair, quiet on a Sunday afternoon, with well paved streets and not much traffic.  The temperature was pleasant, in the high 80's.  I took a walk around town starting about 4 and went to the port but not much else as I was tired and it was dark before 6.  Port Blair is named after a Lieutenant Archibald Blair, who surveyed the islands in 1788.  A settlement was founded and then moved to Port Cornwallis on North Andaman Island, but was abandoned after only a few years.  Port Blair was refounded in 1858 as a penal colony after the 1857 Indian Mutiny.  The islands at that time were populated by tribal people of what is called Negrito stock, similar to Africans but smaller.  Fewer than a thousand now remain, of four different tribes.  South of the Andamans are the Nicobar Islands, which have something like 30,000 tribal people, of Asian stock.  The Nicobars are closed to foreigners and almost all Indians.

I went to bed early and got up soon after 4 the next morning.  I would have like to spend a day or two in Port Blair, but there was a ferry leaving for Diglipur on North Andaman at 6, and I got to the port soon after 5 to get a ticket.  I got one without too much of a problem and we departed Port Blair in the morning sunshine and headed north along the east coast of jungle covered South Andaman Island, with hills rising to over 500 feet.  Other ferries were departing to the islands of Havelock and Neil in the Ritchie Archipelago to the northeast.  The ferry boat was about 130 feet long and 30 wide.  I stood out on the aft deck for the first two hours watching the coast go by, with ocassional sights of flying fish gliding for surprisingly long distances once distrurbed by our passage.

About 8 I walked about a bit and was invited onto the bridge, where I spent the rest of the ten hour voyage.  We were heading for the strait between Bharatang Island, just north of South Andaman, and Ritchie's Archipelago to the east, with the islands of Havelock and Neil and others with English names, many named after heroes of the Mutilny (British heroes, that is).  We passed by Strait Island, reserved for the last few Great Andamanese tribal people (50 or so, but once numbering in the thousands) and then along Long Island, just off the coast of Middle Andaman Island and about the mid point of the ferry ride.  I enjoyed it on the bridge.  The crew members were friendly and I could look at the instruments and the charts.  I could sit when I wanted and had a great view.   We saw only one other ship, a coast guard ship, and no villages along the coast.  A couple of dolphins swam just in front of our prow for a short while.

About 1 we reached the port of Mayabunder in a bay near the north end of Middle Andaman Island.  About 20 of our 100 or so passengers disembarked during our five minute stay.  Heading further north along North Andaman we passed Saddle Peak, actually two peaks with a wide saddle between them.  South Saddle Peak, slightly higher than North Saddle Peak, is the Andaman's highest, at over 2400 feet.  We reached the bay we were heading to on the northeast coast of North Andaman, passing a gleaming white sandbar beach that connects Smith Island to Ross Island to its east, and docked about 4 at Aerial Bay, the port for Diglipur, which is several miles inland.  This area is the Port Cornwallis (who became Governor General of India after his defeat at Yorktown) of old.  From Aerial Bay I headed not to Diglipur, but took an auto rickshaw down the coast a few miles to a guesthouse near the village of Kalipur.  I checked into quite a nice little hut, with a good bed, mosquito net, and an attached bath room, just a few hundred feet from the beach.  Having eaten nothing but cookies on the ferry, I was hungry, but took a walk on the beach before sunset.  A small island is just offshore, and there are mangroves along portions of the beach.  The tide was coming in.  An enclosed turtle hatchery sits along the beach, full of eggs transplanted after being laid on the beach. I walked to the south end of the beach, where a creek empties into the sea.  A sign warned of crocodiles.  An almost full moon was rising and it was dark before 6.  The Andamans are in the same time zone as the rest of India, though they are far to the east, forming a slight arc along with the Nicobars from south of Burma towards the northern tip of Sumatra.

I slept well, under the mosquito net with no fan necessary in the cool night air, and was awakended by the birds about 4:30 as it was getting light.  About 5 I walked to the beach.  I walked up and down but saw no turtle tracks.  I explored the  mangroves and then walked along the road a bit before coming back for breakfast.  About 10 I went back to the beach, walked across the wide rocky reef, coverered at high tide, and went snorkeling.  I swam across to Craggy Island, the small island across from the beach.  The current wasn't too strong, but it was longer than it looked.  The fish were more plentiful there, but the coral almost everywhere was bleached.  There were lots of clam of various sizes, some very big.  Most of them had beautiful dark blue mantles.  I swam along the island and enjoyed seeing all the colorful fish.  I got out onto the island's small sandy beach and then explored the interior, with big trees full of birds.  It was great while snorkeling along the island to come up and hear all the birds twittering in the island's trees.  The swim back was easier as the tide was lower and I got back to the hotel about 1:30 for lunch.  About 3 I went snorkeling again.  The walk across the reef was easier, as the tide was low and it was dry.  Among the fish I saw were a lion fish and a ray in the sand, plus a large and colorful crown of thorns starfish.  I got back about 5, took a shower and went back to the beach to watch the full moon rise over Craggy Island.  There was an interesting group of people staying at the guesthouse and I stayed up until about 10.

I got up about 6 the next morning and walked to the beach.  I watched the tide come in, the high water chasing the mudskippers towards the beach through the mangroves.  There were also birds and dragon flies in the mangroves.  I went to breakfast about 8 and returned to the beach about 9.  Thousands of hermit crabs were gathered along the high tide line, clinging to tree trunks in places.  I went back to the beach at around 11 and the hermit crabs was dispersed with the tide going out.  There were sand flies on the beach so I spent little time there.

This day was Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, when people pelt each other with colored powder and water.  One guy took a motorcycle into Diglipur and returned covered with several colors of powder.  It took days for the red to disappear from his head and hair.  Others covered with powder stopped by the restaurant.  Rather than get pelted by powder, I went snorkeling, from about 12:30 to 5.  I swam across to Craggy Island and swam up and down it, seeing all sorts of fish.  I swam along it to both its southern and northern ends.  I got close to a lion fish, with a poisonous sting, and swam along clouds of very small fish, less than an inch long, some of which would jump briefly out of the water.  The afternoon was beautiful and a couple of fishing boats motored through the channel.  After returning and showering, I came back to the beach.  The tide was very low, with the wide rocky reef completely exposed as the moon rose.

After staying up late, I slept until 7 the next morning.  About 11 another guy and I caught a bus that dropped us off at Aerial Bay, where we joined two others for a boat ride to the sand bar between Smith and Ross Islands.  It took only 15 minutes to get there and we spent about five hours there, from noon to 5.  The tide was high when we arrived and the sand bar narrow.  There was good snorkeling there and I snorkeled until 4 with one short break.  I saw lots of fish and several coral snakes.  I watched three of them near each other as they swam around the coral and then ascended to the surface for air.  Six times I saw them slowly surface for a gulp of air and then quickly descend.  I saw four or five lion fish, three of them swimming in a row.  There were several sea anemones, harboring their protective clown fish.  One of them had a very tiny baby clown fish.  At one point I saw two lion fish and a coral snake together.  There were swarms of little blue fish.  After 4 I sat on the beach and then walked along the now much wider sand bar.  We took the boat back just before sunset, and watched the sun set from the coast at Aerial Bay before taking an auto rickshaw back.

The next morning I was up early, at 5, and walked along the beach to watch the sunrise.  A little later fishermen were fishing with nets along the reef.  After a long breakfast, I snorkeled from about 10:30 to 12:30, along the reef without going over to Craggy Island.  I saw a puffer fish, among others.  After lunch, I snorkeled again along the reef from about 2 to 4:30, with lots of fish to be seen.  There were some big waves that afternoon.

The next day was another day of snorkeling, both in the morning and in the afternoon until about 5.  Schools of small fish would let me swim next to them.   One large school would look one color from one angle and different colors from different angles.

The next morning several of us had decided to climb Saddle Peak.  I got up shortly after 5, but decided not to leave early with the others without breakfast, but to have breakfast first, which didn't start until 7.  Instead, I walked to the beach and saw one of the turtle wardens, who sleep in a hut on the beach at night, carrying a bowl of turtle eggs that he reburied, about a foot and a half deep, inside the enclosed hatchery.  I spotted on the sand the wide tracks of the turtle that laid them during the night.  Breakfast took longer than I hoped and I got out on the road soon after 8 and walked a short distance, maybe 10 minutes, to the village center of Kalipur to wait for the bus to the end of the road at Lamiya Bay, about two and a half miles south of Kalipur, where the trek up to Saddle Peak's summit begins.  No bus came along until almost 9 and then it didn't go all the way to Lamiya Bay.  I had to walk more than a mile before I reached the start of the path.

I didn't get started on the path until after 9:30, later than I had hoped.  The first part of the hike was flat, through giant trees along the coast line.  The area was beautiful and the path easy to follow.  Many of the trees had large buttresses.  I came across some friendly people and even some cows grazing under the trees along the way.  It took me almost two hours before I began to climb.  About 11:30 I crossed a stream and began the climb.  A sign at the stream said five kilometers (three miles) to the summit, though I doubted the accuracy of the sign since a sign at the start of the hike said eight kikometers to the summit, and it was far more than three on the flat part of the hike.  The path was good, though steep, though I was bothered by bees on the way up, drawn by my perspiration, I think.  I certainly was sweating heavily.  I met the others coming down about 12:30.  At about 1000 feet the majestic tall trees disappeared and the forest became much less attractive. 

About 2 I stopped for lunch at a lookout over the forest and sea at about 2000 feet.  From the wooden watchtower here were good views of the coastline north.  I could see Craggy Island and Aerial Bay.  The lunch prepared by the guesthouse restaurant was pretty bad, rice with two very small soft boiled eggs.  From there it was only 400 feet in elevation to the summit, but there were several false summits and ups and downs on the way.  I reached the summit at 2417 feet just before 3 and climbed the wooden watchtower to see over the foliage at the summit.  I could see Craggy Island, Aerial Bay and even Smith and Ross Islands to the north and Sound Island and Mayabunder Bay to the south.  To my surprise I noticed I had climbed South Saddle Peak, the higher of the two.  I had thought the trek would be up North Saddle Peak as it is closer to Lamiya Bay.  North Saddle Peak was now visible to the north.  With the sun in the west I couldn't see the western coastline of North Andaman, but I could see out to sea to the east.

I had told myself that I needed to start down by 3 if I was to have any hope of getting back to the road before dark, so I spent only a few minutes at the summit before starting down.  There is a small shrine on the summit just below the lookout tower.  I walked down quickly, with a stop at the watchtower at about 2000 feet, which I thought had a better view than the one at the top.  The path had pegs holding the sticks designating steps and they posed the hazard of causing stumbles, especially if you are tired.  I suspect this path will be quite dangerous once it starts to deteriorate.  I suspect there won't be much, if any, maintenance.  Despite hurrying, I stumbled only once and crossed the creek and reached the flatlands just after 4:30.  I walked quickly through the flatlands of giant trees and noticed that now the tide was low.  I reached the road about ten minutes to six, just as it was getting dark.  There was no bus nor any other transportation, so I had to walk the two and a half miles on the road back to Kallipur.  I walked past the houses near Aerial Bay, of Bengali settlers, and soon it was very dark.  There was no moon and the electricity had gone out.  I reached the guest house at 6:40 and immediately ate dinner with a guy who had completed the hike earlier and was at the restaurant.  I think I drank a couple of liters of water.  I had taken four liters with me.  After dinner, I took a shower by flashlight as the power was still out and went to bed about 8.

I awoke the next morning about 6, but stayed in bed until almost 7.  I spent a relaxing mornning, except for washing my very dirty clothes.  I was tired, but not very sore.  I went snorkeling along the reef from about 2 to 5 and saw four sea turtles, including two at once.  Three were of one species and one of another, but I'm not sure which.  Maybe the first three were hawksbill and the other a green sea turtle.  They weren't the giant leatherbacks, which also inhabit the area.  I also saw a sting ray.  The sun was setting as I emerged. After showering I walked along the beach until dark and then rested in my hut.  I was tired and skipped dinner, falling asleep about 8.

The next morning I was up soon after 5 and went for a walk on the beach.  The tide was very low.  I saw the morning ferry on its way from Aerial Bay to Port Blair.  After breakfast I snorkeled from about 9:30 to 11, and then again from about 2:30 to 5 before another walk on the beach until dark.

I thought about leaving the next day, but decided to stay another day.  After a morning walk on the beach and a long breakfast, I took a bus to Lamiya Bay, arriving about noon.  I had decided to spend the afternoon walking among the big trees in the flatlands along the first part of the Saddle Peak trek.  I spent about five hours walking around, slowly.  A couple of times I sat on the sandy and rocky beaches to rest and enjoy the views.  One beach had shipwrecks of rafts.  There was a good breeze early in the afternoon, but it died down later.  The weather had become quite a bit hotter than when I had first arrived in Kalipur.  Emerging from the forest onto the road about 5, I walked along the road for about 20 minutes along the farmhouses until the day's last bus came by and was back at Kalipur before dark.

I did finally leave the next day.  After a final walk on the beach and breakfast, I got a ride into Diglipur, larger than I expected but still a small town, maybe ten miles away, arriving about 10:30.  There was a bus south to Mayabunder at 11, but I missed it as I wasn't told that it didn't leave from the bus station but from the fish market.  I found an internet cafe and waited for the 2:15 bus, which left, oddly enough, from the bus station.  The ricketty bus wasn't full and rumbled over the hilly terrain, rising to over 500 feet in elevation.  The drive was scenic despite a surprising large amount of people, all migrants from the mainland, living along the way.  It is about 50 miles from Diglipur to Mayabunder (it is 200 miles and 10 to 12  hours by road from Diglipur to Port Blair) and we arrived about 5 after crossing the bridge over Austin Strait between North and Middle Andaman.  Mayabunder is on a little peninsula and I got an okay hotel before taking a walk around town, with some nice views over the water.  The hotel was run by a Karen family, descendents of migrants from Burma, brought by the British to work lumber mills and other jobs.