Years ago I was flying back from somewhere in South-East Asia, or maybe it was Australia, when I spotted way down below, smack in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a cluster of myriad islands. You probably know the kind - encircled by white then various shades of turquoise, seemingly afloat in endless ultramarine. One of my greatest pleasures is flying over countries I know and pinpointing places I’ve been to. The next is spotting places I want to go to. Those islands stuck in my mind for years, somehow always inaccessible yet ever enticing. Now I’m just back from them - they are the Andaman Islands. In other words - Paradise Found.
It was a tricky trip to set up and it was only at 5.20 on a Friday afternoon (with the airline office closing at 5.30) that the e-ticket finally popped into my inbox for a Monday morning flight. Those Indian islands really played hard to get. Landing in Port Blair from Chennai took me back to tiny little airstrips in Indonesia where once I took off from a ploughed field - I was the only passenger to check in at a hut where the official had never seen a computerised ticket before. Anyway, Port Blair is nothing to write home about - best left asap. It could be beautiful, as hills roll around a bay with islands in the distance. But somehow the scattered concrete and mismatched houses don’t add up to much atmosphere. Above all you know that better stuff lies beyond. Below is one of the lovely inhabitants - they’re an incredible mix of Tamil, Bengali, Burmese and Karen people (one of Burma’s much repressed ethnic minorities), most of whom were brought here by the Brits in the late 19th and early 20th century. The earliest ones were convicts, or rather viewed as such by the Brits after the First War of Independence in 1857 (which our history books refer to as the Indian Mutiny). Later came economic needs - the loggers needed cheap manpower after all….
What struck me immediately in Port Blair were the goats. Roaming everywhere, they were completely relaxed, oblivious to traffic yet apparently easily rounded up at the end of the day to be milked. Essential nutrition for the majority Bengali and Tamil population. Then, heading towards an eco-camp on the edge of mangroves I suddenly saw tsunami-struck landscapes, apocalyptic visions of an aftermath. Dead trees emerged from flooded rice-fields and later on I was shown how huge tracts of mangrove had died. Although the Andamans actually suffered little compared to the Nicobars further south, to Sri Lanka, Thailand and above all Sumatra, they did get shaken. Only two people died in Port Blair but the earthquake left its mark on the landscape, tilting the islands so that sea-water washed around the tree roots and seeped into the padi-fields. Over the next few days, as I was boated around dozens of islands, I often saw long stretches of completely dead trees - fronting deep green tropical forest and blinding white beaches. It was like a constant reminder - that paradise always has a price.
Days camping on wild beaches were followed by days spent in a beautiful thatched hut, part of a resort built in a regenerated banana plantation - Barefoot at Havelock www.barefootindia.com. All fused together in a humid tropical heat that was also draining. Like Rajan the elephant who refused to swim (that’s another story that may come later), I happily resisted over-activity. Listening to 45 odd bird species from my verandah was enough, capped by a stroll through the massive and magnificent forest of hardwoods bordering Beach no 7 on Havelock Island. A divinely fresh grilled fish spiked with ginger and garlic and served by big smiles at a local restaurant. Finally a dip in the azure waves. I didn’t spot the resident dugong - but then you can’t have it all can you?
