TRULY OUT OF THIS WORLD!
Once you finally get there, India’s far-f lung Andaman Islands are . . .
There is no getting around it — the Andaman Islands are a long way away. Across the Bay of Bengal, they sit 846 miles east of Chennai and are nearer to Myanmar and Thailand than India, to which they belong.
But that’s part of their appeal. They feel remote, magical, untouched. Of the 572 islands that make up the Andamans, only 38 are inhabited.
Now a beautiful new hotel by Taj on the Andaman Island of havelock will tempt visitors. After a two-hour flight from Chennai ( ten hours from London) to the capital, Port Blair, and then a two-hour ferry to havelock, you’ll be delighted to have arrived.
Set amid a coconut grove, the Taj has been built around the trees. Great big Sea Mohwa tree trunks — known as buttresses — dominate and coconuts are harvested every day and served to guests. The vast villas dotted within this lovely landscape are big enough to live in.
You can hear the sea, and glimpse it from the elevated, shady 50-metre pool. The hotel is minutes from radhanagar beach, though the dense foliage that creeps towards the water means you can’t see it from the sand.
The beach makes every hour of travel worth it. It’s been voted Asia’s best — and it’s a beauty, curving more than a mile with ghost crabs hopping in and out of their holes as the waves wash over them. The sea is warm, the rock pools good for snorkelling.
Come here between November and April and you can see turtles hatching on the sand by moonlight. October to March is the best time to travel.
The hotel’s naturalist, Jocelyn, takes us on a tour of the forest by the shore, pointing out lizards, hermit crabs, the Indian almond tree, a bright orange kingfisher, all the while explaining the different layers of canopy that make up the complex ecosystem. It’s steaming hot and the cicadas sometimes reach such a crescendo they drown out conversation.
The Taj has embraced its vibrant surroundings. The head chef, Kaushik Misra, travelled through Middle and South Andaman tasting local cooking by way of inspiration. The food is delicious.
In The Settlers restaurant you can try dishes brought to the Andamans from all over India. So, lobster masala from West Bengal, grouper wrapped in banana leaf from Kerala.
The islands are protected by the Indian government and most are off-limits.
You might have seen footage of tribesmen firing arrows at a helicopter after the devastating tsunami of 2004. They were the Sentinelese, who live on North Sentinel Island and don’t welcome visitors. When Marco Polo came across the Andamans in the 13th century, he described the natives as ‘savage’. In 1563 another sailor, Master Caesar Frederick, warned, ‘ If any ship, by ill fortune, stop at these islands, no one comes back alive’. But don’t fret! The locals you’ll encounter are warm and friendly. Some of the Nicobari tribe work at the hotel and the staff are uniformly cheerful and helpful. The British have history here, too. Prisoners, particularly freedom fighters, were sent to the Andamans, to a prison in Port Blair — the Cellular Jail, based on London’s Pentonville ntonville Prison. It must have been grim. ross Island, opposite, is where the British governor lived. I don’t visit but if you do, you’ll see the once grand home which had a ball room, tennis courts and club house, being overtaken by the trees. Fitting perhaps.
One night I kayak out to the mangroves off havelock harbour. It’s eerie. Lightning is flashing in the distance and the wind flicks up the sea. Might that loud splash be a crocodile?
But once we’ve navigated through a tunnel of trunks to a lake, the stillness is spellbinding. Our guide says he paddles out every day and thinks of it as therapy. When the moon is hidden by cloud, you can see the plankton sparkle as you dip your paddle in and out of the water.