The Andaman Islands, Not Just Beaches

Met at Veer Savarkar airport in Port Blair — officially Sri Vijaya Puram since 2024 — and taken to your hotel. In the afternoon, the Cellular Jail, a national memorial since 1979. The British built it between 1896 and 1906: seven wings of solitary cells, three storeys high, spreading from a central tower like the spokes of a wheel, so that no prisoner could see another. Three wings still stand.

Its prisoners, sent across the kala pani, the ‘black water’, included many who fought for India’s independence, and the museum tells their stories. If time allows, a boat to Ross Island — Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep since 2018 — the headquarters of the British settlement, where the church, the bakery and the Chief Commissioner’s house are held in the roots of fig trees, and spotted deer and peacocks walk the paths.

In the evening, back to the jail for the sound and light show in its courtyard: the story of the settlement and of the men it held, told in voices and light as the dark comes down over the wings of cells.

A long day on the road north, the length of Middle Andaman, through Rangat and Mayabunder and across the creeks to North Andaman. The forest gives way to paddy fields, coconut and areca groves, and villages settled from the mainland over the last century — and near Mayabunder by Karen families who came from Burma in the 1920s.

Diglipur is the main town of North Andaman, below Saddle Peak, at 732 metres the highest point in the islands. The forest around it hides limestone caves, the Alfred Caves among them, and in winter sea turtles come ashore to nest on Kalipur beach nearby. You arrive in the late afternoon, and the evening is free.

Early south again, back through Mayabunder to Rangat, a market town in Middle Andaman among paddy fields and forest, where you stay the night. Check in, then out to the coast, which is quieter here than anywhere you have been so far.

Amkunj Beach, where the benches and shelters are made of driftwood; Dhaninallah, where a long wooden boardwalk leads through the mangrove forest to the beach; and, if there is time, the other beaches along this coast, where you may have the sand to yourself.

The walk to Lalaji Bay: about two hours on a forest trail across the island, under tall trees loud with birds, to a long beach of white sand and clear, calm water, good for swimming and snorkelling. Take water, a hat and something to eat, stay as long as you like, and come back by boat if you would rather not walk.

If there is time and the sea allows, a boat across to Merk Bay on North Passage Island, close by, for another long stretch of white sand and clear water, and a swim before the boat brings you back to Long Island for the night.

A shared speedboat up the coast to Elephant Beach, about 25 minutes from the jetty, for the best snorkelling on the island. The reef starts almost at the shore in about a metre of water, so first-timers can float over coral and fish within a few strokes of the sand; further out, the larger reef is mostly hard coral, busy with life.

Between swims, the shade. Fallen trees, bleached grey, lie across the white sand where the sea has brought them down, and they make the photographs everyone takes. Back to Havelock in the afternoon, with the evening free.

A last morning on the beach, then the ferry back to Port Blair and your hotel. The rest of the day is yours: the waterfront at Marina Park in the evening, or the Anthropological Museum, which tells the story of the islands’ first peoples.