Introduction and Geography of Port Blair
[[00:01]]
Yeah, I’m recording now. So, we lived for one year and to give you an idea, Port Blair is on the west side of the island. Okay. And the ship, usually what it does is it goes through this route and then comes on.
[[00:28]]
Just one second. Hold on. All right. Hello. Hello. H good evening sir.
[[02:44]]
Sorry, sorry about that. Okay. So the ship actually goes through this channel and then comes to the west. Okay. And this Haddo, this place in Port Blair is the harbor. This is where the harbor is. Okay. And this is the Chatham sawmill, this is one of Asia’s largest sawmills, even now. Okay. So a lot of rosewood, Padauk wood—Padauk was originally from Andaman—this is the mill that they used to use.
Key Attractions in and Around Port Blair
[[03:24]]
And then there is Ross Island, this one. Okay. This is Ross Island. The English, the Britishers, they used to have it as a summer island and just for recreational purposes. So it is actually pretty good to go here. You can see it from Port Blair itself because this is where the Cellular Jail is, and from Cellular Jail, you can see this.
[[03:49]]
Actually, Cellular Jail should be in your itinerary because of the eight wings, just like a spider, only three wings exist; the rest has been converted into a hospital. Okay. So you don’t have many wings to see, but there is a very good light and sound show. Okay. That you shouldn’t miss. This is the entrance here, and then the light and sound happens twice in the evening. One I think is at 5:00, the other one is I think at 7:00 or something. Okay. So you can book in advance or you can get the tickets there itself. And this is where the hospital is.
[[04:30]]
From Cellular Jail itself, you can see Ross Island. And everywhere, wherever you want to take a boat to go somewhere, it’s called a jetty. Okay. So you have this Aberdeen jetty from where you can go to Ross Island. Then there will be Haddo Jetty from where you can go to another island, and also one another jetty is there I think, Junglighat. Yeah, this was, this is another jetty, Junglighat jetty, from where I think you can go to Jolly Buoy.
Beaches and Marine Life
[[05:00]]
So Jolly Buoy is present here. This is Jolly Buoy. Okay. So you have to kind of travel by road. We went to Chidiyatapu and then from there we took a ferry. Okay. Or you can take a ferry from any one of these nearest points also. Got it.
[[05:24]]
Chidiyatapu is a nice beach. There are a lot of beaches in Port Blair itself, like this Corbyn’s Cove, and there is one more beach somewhere here. Those will be crowded. Okay. And they will be dirty. They will not be that nice. But I suppose better than Madras. Yeah. But of course, you can go a little bit on this side because waves are not that deep and there is no current. So you go inside the sea with safety. It’s not a problem.
[[06:02]]
Then Chidia Tapu is a really nice place. And even this Wandoor beach, this one, Wandoor Beach, that’s also very nice.
[[06:15]]
When you go to Jolly Buoy or any of these island trips—you can book, everything is almost the same—they will take you in a ferry up to this point, okay, like in the middle of the sea. From there, they will take you to this island by another boat which will have glass flooring. Okay. And that glass flooring is like a magnified lens. So what we used to do was we used to take umbrellas with us, and then you basically will sit around the port. No one will be sitting in the center because it’s only a glass floor. So when you cover it with an umbrella, you can see all the coral reefs and all the fishes and amazing marine beauty up to this point because that is where coral reefs are.
[[07:14]]
So any island that you go to, make sure to have this coral reef thing because in India, Lakshadweep has coral reefs but not so much biodiversity like in Andaman. Okay. So, Andaman Coral Reef is like one important checkbox you can have.
Travel and Historical Context
[[07:35]]
All right. If you’re coming by flight, then this is the only airport. It says international airport, but as of now, I don’t think there are any international flights going from and to any other country. Okay. But I may be wrong, I have to check.
[[07:55]]
Near this, you can see the winding road which means this is a hill. Okay. So this is downhill and then at the hill’s end, you have the harbor. And on the way, we used to go to this Balaganapathi temple. The Nattukottai Chettiars, they were the ones who occupied Andaman from Chola times. Yeah. The Cholas used to use Andamans and Nicobars as a base to replenish and then go to Kadaram and Java and all the other islands.
[[08:44]]
What is Kadaram? Kadaram is this place, India, Sumatra… either this island or this island is called Kadaram. Okay. Okay. I see. There is a place in Thanjavur called Kadaram Kondan. Kadaram is Kedah. Yeah. Kedah is Kadaram. Okay. So Kedah is this place, right? So Rajendra Chola, he went and did… even Rajaraja also sent… the name is still there. We still have inscriptions that say Sulawesi. Okay. Kedah was Kadaram. Malacca, Malaysia, that was… So Chennai, if you look at the latitude, it is north, okay, but the port is much closer to the 10-degree.
[[09:49]]
So the channel that separates Andaman islands and Nicobar islands is called the 10-degree channel. Okay. I see. So what ships used to do is they will go via this channel and come to Port Blair once a month. There are three harbors from which ships go. One is Chennai, the other one is Visakhapatnam, the other one is Kolkata. So once a month from Chennai, once a month from Visakhapatnam, once a month from Kolkata. Okay. So you have every week one ship going to Port Blair. But among those three ships, one ship will go to Car Nicobar. Oh, okay. But they will not allow you to get down. You need Coast Guard’s permission and clearance from the army to land in Car Nicobar.
[[10:54]]
I see. Okay. Yeah. But Nicobar is plains. It’s completely plains. Okay. So once what happened, my father when he went alone, he said that the ship made a stop at Car Nicobar and then continued its journey to Port Blair. So there was a one-day delay in the schedule and he said that he was not allowed to go to Car Nicobar even though he was in defense. The lowest point or the endpoint of India is Indira Point, this lighthouse. Oh, okay. This is way south. This is way south. But we used to hear from people who went to Indira Point Lighthouse that if you are there and around sunset you can see lights from Indonesia. Yeah, Indonesia. So you can see the lights from across the sea because it’s nearby.
Indigenous Tribes and Local Culture
[[12:07]]
Coming back, so when we were there, this Andaman highway, the national highway was getting constructed. It was not there. So anything that they used to go, like Swaraj Dweep island or North Passage Island or Strait Island, they used to take the ferry, that was faster. Okay. All of these national highways are hilly. You now can go, but you can plan for a trip via this Jarawa forest.
[[12:37]]
So Andaman has about 15 tribes and Nicobar has about two or three tribes. So Jarawa is the major tribe. This national highway goes through the Jarawa forest and if you get a chance to go via this route, the driver purposefully makes an unscheduled stop and the locals, what they do is they give eatables and stuff to the Jarawa tribes and they come and they meet but they will not talk, they will just grab the food and they will go. But there has been a downside for those types of interactions because they are not immune to our diseases. So, a lot of Jarawas died at some point in time. Okay. And there was a mass extinction that happened. But now it’s more accessible by going to all these different national parks and different islands, Guitar Island, all this. But it will take some time if you’re going by road. You need to plan for at least one day of travel, a full one day of traveling.
[[14:40]]
Right around where we were, Haddo, there is a mini zoo. Okay, it’s a very small zoo, not many animals are there. But around this place, before this, there is an anthropological museum. Yeah, this one here, you have the anthropology museum. That’s actually a really nice museum. Okay. Even at that time also it was very good. They used to have all these, you know, the Jarawa tribe and all these tribes, they used to make boats by digging out a whole tree trunk. So they have all those real models there and they have all those old instruments what Britishers found when they occupied.
Personal Anecdotes and Memories
[[15:41]]
If you get time, you go to Haddo. The reason I’m saying is there’s a street. Now this street is the hill point. Okay. And we used to live somewhere here. And this hill, if you can see my video, it’s a 45-degree angle. Oh, okay. And that’s because this was not constructed by the British, and the road was laid by the Japanese when Andaman was occupied by Japan during World War II. Right? So what the Japanese used to do was they were much more brutal than the Britishers, and locals preferred Britishers to Japanese. The Japanese used to enslave all the locals and they used them for constructing roads and infrastructure, and if someone protested or did something, they would bury them alive. So all these roads, if you take, you will find skeletons. Even now.
[[17:00]]
This is the Ayyappan temple we used to frequent, and everyone we knew used to go from this Ayyappan temple to Sabarimala by plane and ship. Then we had this theater, it is somewhere here. We used to go every week to the theater because all movies were screened: Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, all movies will be screened. And that was actually maintained by the army and it was open for civilians also, and the ticket was 5 rupees. We still have those tickets with us.
[[18:03]]
This is my school. Oh nice. This is my Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 1, I think. This is my school and we used to walk, our bus would drop here. We will walk through this road. All these were staff quarters and this was the playground we used to play. So KV1 is near to the city and KV2 is way far away near the airport.
[[19:38]]
And this Aberdeen, from here, Aberdeen is the main market. So anything and everything, we used to go to Aberdeen. We used to get, like, there was a tailor, I don’t know if he is still there, we used to get all our shirts, he used to do an amazing stitching job. And there is a good aquarium, and on the way from Aberdeen, you get to Cellular Jail.
[[20:10]]
The whole of Port Blair… but now Port Blair has developed all these other areas what you see here. All these things, like even there is an ISKCON it seems. Okay. All these things are pretty new there, and all these places were pretty uninhabited.
[[20:55]]
And there are a lot of islands, like for example, they will take you to… like if I say this island, okay, this island is uninhabited but they will make day trips to this island. I don’t know the name but there are a lot of islands where only day trips are allowed; you cannot stay overnight. Okay. And because the biodiversity and the fauna are very untouched. Wherever you see this kind of thing on the map, all coral reefs. All these have amazing beautiful fishes, beautiful wildlife, a lot of sea organisms, marine organisms. Literally when you go in that boat with a glass flooring, it will be so near that you can actually think of, you know, putting your hand and taking it.
Travel Tips and Recommendations
[[21:59]]
You had all this in the 90s, early 90s?
Yeah. Glass floor boats and all. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was tourist-focused and even from like the 70s onwards, it was a top tourist destination. Oh, I see. But the thing is like, the majority of the population who lived in Port Blair, because that was where everyone was… like Dollygunj, I remember that name. All those were navy and army people. And the locals used to speak… the local language is Hindi. Everyone knows Hindi. Everyone speaks Hindi. But very few people used to speak Andamanese.
[[22:40]]
I used to have a classmate. He was Andamanese. He was from North Andaman. Not Jarawa. So there are like around 15-20 tribes in Andaman itself. Jarawa is one of the tribes. Okay. There are other tribes, and his father worked as a sepoy, so he got admission into KV. And I used to speak with him, interact, and then one time we were playing sports and I saw his sole, you know, his feet. You know our feet has this depression? His feet were flat. There is no depression at all. And I asked him, is this how your entire family is? He said all our tribe people, we don’t have this depression like you mainland people. He used to call us “mainlanders.”
[[23:50]]
Phoenix Bay is another one that you can go to, and it’s a very nice place. There are a lot of things in the Google map that I don’t know much about. So if you follow these dotted lines, all those are ferry lines. Okay, you can look at those ferry lines and those ferries take about like one or two hours to go, depends on the weather. Okay. If the weather is cloudy, the water will be choppy. Okay. If the weather is clear, water will be clean. I mean, you can take a ferry and go. As soon as it gets cloudy, it will be very turbulent waters. That’s the only downside.
[[24:53]]
Then there is this volcano on an island. So that’s called Barren Island. That is the only active volcano in India. Is it possible to go? You can go close to this, but you see how far it is. This is where Port Blair is. Barren Island is way away. Okay. So the tour operator will take you to Barren Island because I have seen packages to Barren Island. People take them. They’ll take you from Port Blair. You can have a private charter boat to go to Barren Island. Don’t look at the price, the price is from the mainland. Okay. Once you are in Andaman, the price is like 500 rupees.
[[26:21]]
So is there like… when I went to Assam, we got cheated a lot because there were ferries across the Brahmaputra. One was private and the private one was like 10 times more than the government one. So is it similar? You have a lot of people who scam you. Okay. But it says it takes about four to five hours. I don’t think that is the cost. It’s way higher in this particular page.
[[27:05]]
If you could go to Andaman tourism, the government website, this is the government website. Here you can do e-booking on a lot of things. They have a lot of packages, attractions, and all that. If there is a thing about Barren Island then you can take it from this website. It’s a bit outdated, not properly made, but this is the genuine website.
[[27:50]]
Do you know about snorkeling, where? All these islands where they have this coral reef, you can do snorkeling. Okay. And they will rent the equipment there. Yeah. You can get the equipment by rent. What about scuba diving? Yeah. See, scuba diving brochure. Scuba diving. Okay. So you can call this tourist information center and there will be an underwater guide who will accompany you. Oh nice. And they will take you, they will give you all the gear. It’s on a rent basis and you can do it. It’s allowed. There is even an undersea walk facility.
[[29:33]]
They have mangroves, coral reefs. So they would have listed where all you can see the coral reefs. Yeah. You see the red regions? All those are coral reefs. Oh, nice. So that is a marine national park. So Jolly Buoy is where I’m pointing here. Okay. So that is where there is coral. So you’ll see all these beautiful fishes. I still remember what I saw in ‘91 or ‘92. It’s amazing. You should see it at least once in your life.
[[30:11]]
Yeah, I have seen, I remember seeing this fish or this fish. One of these fishes. Okay. Either an angel fish or a butterfly fish. You’ll see a lot of sea urchins, anemones, whatever you saw in the Finding Nemo movie. You will see some variation of that. So you see Jolly Buoy here. This area is a coral reef. All the red regions are coral reefs. So there’s a lot of coral reefs there.
Flora, Fauna, and Local Produce
[[30:51]]
Is there an institution to study all this? Yeah, there is a CSIR institute in Port Blair. There is a government institute and all this. There’s a National Institute of Oceanography there and CSIR’s own… there is even an ICMR institute there. Nice. There is even a mangrove research unit there. And you get a lot of Rudraksha. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, there are a lot of Rudraksha trees. We got a lot of Rudraksha when we came back. One Rudraksha mala we still have it at home. You get a lot of Panchamukhis.
[[32:15]]
Barren Island is a good choice, I would say, if the weather is permitting and if it is within budget, do go to Barren Island. Got it. But be wary of scams. Okay. Because a lot of people scam you just like what you said with Assam. Because it’s become… after COVID a lot of people are traveling to Andaman. After the 2004 tsunami, Port Blair was affected, but not so much. But there was damage. It’s become more commercial than what I remember.
[[33:13]]
So what actually is your priority?
- Scuba diving
- Snorkeling
- Volcano
- Coral reefs
Yes. Go to Ross Island. You can even go to Viper Island. That’s a day trip. There are some ruins there like this. Okay. It’s a historical place but they don’t allow anyone to stay overnight.
[[33:51]]
This Deepika, you see Deepika is there. It says Deepika Movie Studio. Okay. So this is the theater we used to go to. Ah, it’s still there. And these apartments you see here, this is where we used to live. And this is a valley. So this was like a hillside. And we used to trek down this valley and go to the Ayyappan temple. On the way what would happen is, see this lake here? One stream will flow through this. And there will be a short bridge. One time when my brother and me and my father went to the temple, we were coming back from the temple and coming back through that route. It became dark. A big creature the size of his face just landed on him and its legs were like… it covered his entire head. He just plucked it and then threw it away. It was dark. We don’t even know what it was. Lot of amazing wildlife. “Must have been a bat or something, right?” It wasn’t a bat.
[[36:05]]
Everything is very big in Andaman. We used to get this big lady’s finger. Okay. And it used to be very tender and the color would be pink. It will not be green. And we never used to buy milk from the cows there, because the cows used to have been bitten by vampire bats, not fruit bats, vampire bats, and they always will be infected with some virus. And so the locals said to us that don’t buy milk from the cow because you’ll get chickenpox. So some viral disease used to come from the cows. So what we used to do was we used to buy Amul, and we used to reconstitute it with water. Oh, that’s a very useful tip. What the army people used to do is they will get this tin, you know the 10-kilo tin, each family will get one tin of milk powder every month. That was the only way that we could survive with milk.
[[37:58]]
Yeah, that’s very useful information. No, but now things have changed. Okay. I’m talking about the 90s. Now things have changed. Now the milk will be probably locally produced or, you know, dairy is probably better now because the population has increased a lot.
[[38:29]]
All these roads you can probably take an evening walk, you know, it’s really beautiful. You’ll be seeing… it will not be very clear water here because you see this ferry route, you’ll see a lot of dirty water here. Okay. In fact, the Cellular Jail, I don’t know if they show it even now… there used to be an outlet somewhere. Not sewage, but whom they used to hang, that’s how they disposed of the body, and so there used to be some crocodiles and marine animals that would eat them up. So that outlet, I think they showed us once, but I’m not able to point out where it is here. Okay. But maybe when they show the tour, because you can go and see the Savarkar’s cell, that cell is preserved. And also V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, he was there in Kalapani. And he used to do the chakki (oil press). And there is a statue of him doing that, kind of like a figure. So all that will be present here in this area.
[[40:51]]
Wherever you see the beaches in Port Blair, those will be crowded with the usual crowd. We went to Corbyn’s Cove probably twice or thrice. We used to prefer beaches where there were not many people around, Jolly Buoy Beach and all these island beaches. The sand will be white in color. The beaches that are very popular with the usual local tourist places, you know, regularly visited, all those will be black in color. The sand will be dark. So we never went to those beaches. Havelock Island, all these beaches will be pristine. No pollution. You literally will not see any pollution on those beaches.
Life in Andaman
[[41:54]]
You still have contacts in Andaman? No, I don’t have any contacts. The only contact I had was, I came in touch with my classmate when I was in JNU. She came for an internship and I was doing my PhD at that time. We ended up talking and then we realized we remembered all our classmates. Her name is Shoma Chaudhury, she’s a Bengali. So she’s now settled in Gurgaon. Her father was also in the navy. She spent a longer period in Andaman than me. She finished up to her 12th standard in KV and then she came to the mainland for her college study. But I was there only for one year. My dad’s transfer was for 3 years, and one year he was there getting to know the place before he brought us in, and then we were there for one year, and then he stayed back for one more year and then he got transferred to Chennai.
[[44:20]]
My mom… we used to find frogs this big. The apartment complex we lived in, the army quarters… coconuts grow like wild trees. Okay. So the rule of the land at that time—I don’t know how it is now—was any coconut tree that you see in front of your house, it’s yours. So any coconut that falls, you can just go and take it. In the market that we get now, if the coconut shell is this big, in Andaman the coconut shell will be this big. Wow. We still have those shells. We brought those shells with us because we couldn’t see anywhere in India that big coconut shells because the land, even though it’s hilly, it’s extremely fertile.
[[45:30]]
My landlady, before we moved to the quarters, we lived with a Malayali lady. There was a banana plant. She cut the banana plant in the morning before going to work. By evening when she came back it had grown 1 foot. Literally so fast. In the mainland, it will grow like maybe 3-4 inches because it’s a fast-growing plant. But in Andaman, it grew by 1 foot. Wow. And we were all amazed at it. It was so fertile. They used to grow vegetables locally just outside their home.
[[46:12]]
Every day morning it will be clear. You can see the sea from your house because everything is hilly. In the morning, you will see the sails, the boats, they’re going for fishing. Within an hour’s time, they will come to your doorsteps and sell those fishes. It will not smell at all because they’re fresh. Literally so fresh. At some point of time, my mom was like, the fishes look so lovely, maybe we should probably start eating fish because we didn’t get that many vegetables. We used to only survive on basic dal chawal. This fresh fish didn’t have any smell. It was something new for us. We usually associate fish with smell. None of the fishes had a smell. Wow. Sharks, eels, they used to bring all those to the doorstep and they’ll ask, “Do you want?” And it will be very cheap, like they will sell by kilo for 20 rupees or 30 rupees a kilo.
[[47:43]]
In the morning, it’ll be clear. By 12:00 you’ll see the clouds forming because the water vapor goes up, convection. In the evening, there’ll be a heavy downpour. So it used to rain 9 months. Only 3 months in a year there was no rain.
[[48:02]]
And we did the journey two times by ship. During the rainy time, we had seasickness like anything. One time we went in December when there was no rain and the sea was literally like a bedsheet spread, not a single ripple. And turtles, dolphins used to come with the ship. And morning sunrise, sunset, like so magical because there’s nothing you can see up to the horizon. You can see the turtles coming up for feeding, you can see the dolphins coming along with us. And what the dolphins will do is they will chase along with the ship. At the bow of the ship, you can go and then you can look down. You will see dolphins swimming faster than the ship. It used to be so nice.
Food and Dining
[[49:08]]
You get a lot of non-veg items in Andaman. So be careful. Because seafood is very, very popular. Everything will have seafood. There is one restaurant called Annapurna Restaurant. That restaurant was established right around the time the Britishers were there. Whenever we used to go to Aberdeen market, that is the only restaurant we used to go to because that was pure veg. And we used to buy pulao, and that was a really good one.
[[49:52]]
Talking with you is bringing back a lot of old memories. Oh, it’s still there. Okay. Yeah. This is the one. I remember the sign. They didn’t even change the sign. It’s still there. It’s still the same. So that is the one restaurant at that time which was pure vegetarian. Now I think there are more vegetarian restaurants, so you don’t have to worry about it. That was close to Aberdeen. This entire road from the museum is Aberdeen market. At the end, there will be a clock tower. This clock tower is a very nice thing to see. This was something at that point of time we found very fancy. If you go down the same road you’ll come to the aquarium and then the Cellular Jail. So if we wanted to take a long walk, we’ll go up to this aquarium and then we’ll come back home tired because it’s like two or three hills. It’s not flat.
Final Travel Advice and Logistics
[[51:21]]
So the only best place to live when visiting is Port Blair? Yeah. Okay. Port Blair. None of the other islands generally allow you to stay over? No, you have, right now that’s what… So right now on the map I’m able to see resorts, like see this Bamboo Flat. Okay. That is another area. This is a residential area but then you have a resort here. Okay. So now a lot of things have come up. So if you find a resort or a hotel that’s on another island, Havelock or some other island, then that’s actually a pretty nice experience to have. Okay. Otherwise, your main stay and a lot of hotel options are only here.
[[52:25]]
If you want to do a lot of snorkeling, they would need to go south? You need to either go like around this area, west side. But there are not many coral reefs there. You will not have many coral reefs here but you will have coral reefs in this area. I see. Because this is a marine park. And even this area also you have a lot of coral reefs. It’s not very far, two hours maximum. Not more than two hours.
[[53:22]]
If I want to do a lot of snorkeling I would ideally look for accommodation nearby there. Or you can start early, stay the entire day, and come back later. Good idea. Have lunch and then come back. So half a day is enough for snorkeling. Okay. Because at the maximum, because it’s commercial, they rent it out, you can do snorkeling for a maximum of maybe two or three hours, not more than that. Scuba diving you can book for more hours.
[[54:37]]
These beaches, they will be renting snorkeling equipment. Okay. But coral will be very less. Got it. Because it’s crowded. And what happens with coral reefs is that more pollution happens, it’s like a litmus test, it starts dying. The lesser the human interaction, the more alive they are. That is why even in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, there are certain places where they don’t allow people because they want to preserve the coral reefs. Same here as well. So all these islands, you have to… be aware that apart from the travel cost, you’ll have to pay an entry fee. Something will be protected, something will be under the army area, something will be under the coast guard area. The tour operator will pay for the permit, but the permit is from the government.
Mythology and Natural Wonders
[[55:53]]
But I definitely would recommend you going to Andaman at least once in your lifetime. We had an amazing time. There is this mythology and legend that everyone says when you reach there. During the Ramayana period when Lakshmana and Rama were unconscious, Hanuman went and got the Sanjeevani mountain. So on the way, he rested in different places and some rocks and some part of the mountain got left behind. Or the other version that you will hear is after Rama and Lakshmana were revived, Hanuman did not know what to do with the mountain, so he just threw it, and those are called Hanuman Dweep, and they turned into Andaman. So this second version is more popular.
[[57:26]]
My experience is that there is a jadi buti there. It has white flowers. It is a weed, no one grows it intentionally. It’s found everywhere. It has a serrated edge, it will look like a betel leaf but with a serrated edge. It’ll have hair on its surface, it will be like velvet to touch. Whenever we used to get a cut, we never went to the doctor. We never went to get stitches. We used to take those leaves, crush them, and then put that juice on that surface. Okay. There will be no scars. Wow. By 24 hours, it will heal. And this is my personal experience as well. I’ve got so many numerous cuts. Every time I will just go and rub the plant leaf. It is not toxic.
[[58:48]]
The one thing that we experienced personally, all four of us, was when we took the flight from Chennai, my brother had contracted typhoid when we were in Chennai. The doctors advised not to take the sea route because they said he doesn’t have the physical strength to withstand 3 days of travel by sea. When we took the flight from Chennai, the air we smelled—this was the 90s, Chennai was still not polluted at the time—but by the time when we landed in Port Blair and we smelled the air, we could visibly smell the vegetation and like a herbal smell. We all four of us were like, this feels like some medicinal smell. And that is because of the legend that says that the Sanjeevani mountain is what became Andaman. A lot of untapped, unknown herbs are there in Andaman even now. We have not mapped, we have not done any critical studies, any in-depth scientific studies of any of those plants. Our neighbors told us that they also tried, but those plants don’t grow on the mainland very well.
[[1:00:54]]
We used to find mallipoo (jasmine) growing wild, and these flowers used to have a jasmine scent but the leaves will be this big. The flower will be adukku, meaning layer upon layer. It will look like a rose, a white rose, but it will be like a malli smelling of jasmine. Amazing smell.
Souvenirs and Handicrafts
[[1:01:46]]
What else? There will be a lot of sea-based products. You can buy sea shells, shell-based, coconut-based items. Those are the handicrafts that are made locally there. Everything gets imported from the mainland. Nothing is produced in the islands except for local vegetables and handicraft items. Cloth, metal, everything comes from the mainland. So if someone says you can buy woodwork from Andaman… if you ask for Padauk wood. So Padauk wood is local in Andaman, but you get Padauk on the mainland also. They will sell you eagles made of Padauk.
[[1:03:09]]
This one. I’ll just share my screen again. This is a very popular product that everyone will buy from Andaman. This woodwork made of Padauk. This eagle. Yeah, like this. Okay. This is exactly what we got. So you will get this eagle. This is very popular.
[[1:04:34]]
What I want to get is the coconut you described. What you do is you ask for a coconut that is ripened. You break it open, eat the meat, and then you can bring the shell with you. That’s the best way if you want because I don’t think they’ll be selling it. Yeah, you do get things like this, like a basket. But if you want to buy just the natural stuff, it will be better to buy the coconut and process it yourself.
[[1:06:42]]
Yes. Mosquitoes will be there but not too much. You will not have a lot of stagnant water around because it rains most of the time. You will find only this type of lizard in Andaman. See, it says Andaman Day Gecko. This is a species very endemic, only in Andaman. You will not find this anywhere else. A lot of betel nut trees. And these geckos used to be in those trees. They will have bright red eyes and their bright red tongue will keep on coming out. And they’ll be superbly bright green. But they are very friendly. They are not venomous. But they are very beautiful to look at.
Closing Thoughts and Memories
[[1:08:33]]
But you will find people speaking in Tamil, you’ll find mostly speaking in Hindi, but you’ll find a mix of all people there, like a mini India. That is where my Sanskrit teacher, he asked my name. I said my name is Raghuttam. Then he asked me, “Do you know the meaning of the name?” I said no, I don’t know the meaning. So then he said in Hindi, I remember to this date, “Raghukul mein uttam, that is Raghuttam.”
[[1:11:30]]
But yeah, do plan. Let me know if you’re planning. Two weeks is a good time. Okay, that’s a good enough time to explore a lot of things. And even if there is some weather-related issue, always have buffer time for some weather-related delays. There will be some weather-related delays. Either the boat will not start on time or there might be too many passengers. They have a headcount; you cannot carry more than a particular number of people onto the boat. So in that case, you’ll have waiting time. So keep two to three days as buffer time.
[[1:12:10]]
And scuba diving, snorkeling, go through that government website. There is a link in that website that says “official tour operators.” You can blindly go with them. They are genuine because they’re government-approved.
[[1:13:03]]
The sad part of our Andaman experience is that I have no photos to show. The reason is my mom had a camera and she took photographs through that camera. That entire reel was overexposed. So when we gave it for processing, everything was white. So whatever I have is memories. I have no documented proof of any of these places. My mom’s camera had a small leak. In the negatives, we could make out, but when he processed it and took a print, everything was too overexposed. Sometime back when we were looking for something, that particular negative thing came up and I have kept it in a very safe place. I don’t know where it is. If I get hold of it, I came across a video where with a negative you can scan it, then you can make it a positive and then you can colorize it. So I want to do that because I want to see myself how I was at the age of 13-14.
[[1:15:49]]
SpiceJet, Indigo, and all… “We booked in Indigo.” Yeah, Indigo is good. “There is no non-stop option from Bangalore, it was Air India Express.” Which dates are you going? Just before Deepavali, like October 18th until November 2nd. Oh okay. Did you contact any agent? “Not yet.” Go through the Andaman government website. This would be a good time to call and book. “Have you booked a hotel?” No, not yet. I’m thinking of… my mom was a State Bank of India employee, so we can book some holiday home. Oh okay. For a few days. I think that would be much cheaper because you’re staying for a longer time. You don’t want to spend money on staying; rather, you can spend money on other things.
[[1:17:04]]
You made my day by talking about all this. And also, yeah, send photos when you go to Barren Island. Do see if you are able to talk in advance and get it because they take very limited people to Barren Island. And Barren Island is weather-dependent. If the weather is choppy, the trip will be canceled because it’s too far. Right now the volcano is not active. But when we were there, that time the volcano became active right around the time we were leaving. So we have a photo of Barren Island because what people used to do was they used to take pictures of Barren Island and all these famous landmarks and they will sell the photos in the tourist places. So we have copies of those photos. You can’t set foot on Barren Island. You can just go, see it, and come back. But that’s the only volcano in India.
[[1:18:06]]