Andaman Islands - The most exotic honeymoon destination in India. ( Part I)

When it comes to choosing a honeymoon destination in India, it's always a war between two types of destinations. 1) Beaches or 2) Hill Stations. I was fighting the same war and it was too difficult to choose between these two. I love mountains and snows and I love beaches as well. I finally zeroed down to either going to the Northeast or Andaman. I brainstormed the idea with my wife and finally concluded we'll go to Andaman. We went with one more couple. My colleague and one of my best friend got married just 10 days after us. So we planned to go for honeymoon together. We spoke with several tour managers and operators for a good deal and finally decided to go with a local Andaman tour operator, Totto Tour and Travels.

We got our flight to Port Blair from Chennai as there wasn't any direct flight from either Bangalore or Delhi.  We boarded Chennai mail from Bangalore to Chennai and reached well before our flight. Our friends also reached Chennai from Delhi and we were eagerly waiting for our flight.

View from flight when we were just about to reach Port Blair

Captured on HTC One

We reached Port Blair airport, known as Veer Savarkar International Airport around noon. Tour operator's representative was there at the airport to receive us. We had a car (Innova) at our disposal during the whole vacation. We reached our hotel which was hardly 5 km from the airport. The representative gave us some time get fresh and asked us to meet him at the reception after lunch to start our tour.

View from our room at Da Bay Inn Hotel, Port Blair

Our tour started with a visit to Cellular Jail. Cellular jail, also known as "Kaala Pani", was a colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. The prison was used by the British especially to exile political prisoners to the remote archipelago. The complex serves as a national memorial monument.

Cellular jail premises

Prison cell hallway

One can go to the terrace of cellular jail which gives a spectacular view of surroundings.The Andaman Sea is visible in the background which makes it a great place to click photographs. We spent a good time enjoying the view and clicking photos here. We left cellular jail and continued our tour to Corbyn's cove beach.

My wife and I at cellular jail's terrace

It was nothing great about this beach. It's the closest beach to Port Blair. It was flooded with tourists and vendors. Lots of water sports activities were on the beach. We spent some time here till evening then went back to cellular jail for evening's light and sound show. The light and sound show tells us about all the tortures and pain inflicted on the inmates. Most of the inmates were freedom fighters, including Veer Savarkar. The light and sound show is a must do activity if you're in Andaman. Our first day of the tour ended here and we proceeded back to our hotel.

Corbyn's Cove Beach

Obligatory couple photo :)

We started our second day of the tour by starting from Ross Island. This island has a lot of history dating back to world war era. It was the administrative headquarters during the British rule.From 1942 to 1945, the island was under control of Japan. There are lots of old buildings remain like chief commissioner's residence, an old printing press, church, bakery. The island was handed over to the Indian Navy in 1979 who then established a museum. If you've come here on a package tour, the tour representative will take care of tickets and other issues and let you know when to reach water sports complex from where you have to take a boat ride to reach the island. The view from the island is breathtaking. There's a small park where deer and rabbits are left open to roam around. Tourists, especially kids were busy playing with these guys.

Below are some photographs of Ross Island. View it at your own leisure.

We were at Ross Island for the whole day, We boarded our cab for going back to the hotel. When on the way, we saw a small beach. It was not really a beach but just a small area where we can go near to the water. We enjoyed watching the sunset from here as the clouds were making a really good composition with water on the foreground. Here are some photos of that beach.

We left for Havelock Islands the next morning. We took an inter-island ferry from Port. Havelock is around 54 km from Port Blair. The ferry ride was not quite smooth so we decided to go to the terrace of the ferry to enjoy the view and fresh air. 

View from the ferry

We reached our hotel, Sea Shells resort. It's an absolutely beautiful resort surrounded by coconut and palm trees. It has around 20 chalets. The resort is just on the beach (Govindnagar beach). We relaxed for a couple of hours and then started our journey of exploring Havelock. We started with Kala Pathar beach. The beach was surprisingly empty. There were literally no tourists except us and one more couple. The beach was small but beautiful. I was lost in clicking photos which made my wife a little upset:). A funny incident happened here with us. We were wandering on the beach and went till one of the end of the beach where there was a huge rock. We climbed on top of that and started taking pictures. There was an electric pole on the rock. There was a loud spark on the pole wires. We got terribly scared and didn't move for a couple of minutes. I told my wife not to run as she was on the edge of the rock. I asked her to slowly come towards me. We climbed down the rock and ran towards the parking area. As it was getting dark and there was no one except us, the driver asked us to leave.

Kala Pathar Beach.  The rock with the pole which scared us, can be seen at the end of the beach.

But the photographer inside me was not ready. I wanted to take a blue hour shot of the beach. I adjusted my tripod and shutter cable and took some photos till I was convinced. Mosquitoes were biting all over my body by the time I was done with photos. I quickly folded my tripod and boarded our cabs to go back. Below are some shots of the beach.

My wife and the blue hour shot

Blue hour shot of the beach.

As we were on honeymoon, the resort staff had included candle light dinner, decorated bed and a cake on the first night of our stay. It was a pleasant experience as it was our first candlelight dinner. We had our dinner and spent some time near the beach in the resort premises.

Click here to read the second part of this blog.