From South to North-east: How I planned a trip to Sikkim.

Our 2nd wedding anniversary was coming closer and we had no plans to travel. We were rather thinking on going to a swanky restaurant and splurge on shopping. But destiny had other plans. We were watching TV where a travel show was running and the host was in North Sikkim. The location was just beautiful. We instantly decided to plan our anniversary trip to Sikkim. This was little over a month ago to our anniversary. I started searching for cheapest flights from Bangalore. Return flights for 2 were coming over 36k which I think was expensive. I waited a couple of more days before finally booking the tickets for 28K ( which was still expensive).

Guru Dongmar Lake, North Sikkim

Andaman Islands - The most exotic honeymoon destination in India. ( Part 2)

Our next day started with Elephant beach. We took a jetty from Havelock port. There's one more way to reach the beach. It's a trekking route. I would want to take this route next time. I am not sure how the beach got it's name from, as you won't see any elephant here. This is the beach if you want to enjoy all kinds of water sports. There's jet skiing, snorkeling, kayaking etc. It's a beautiful beach with blue water, green trees, white sand. Elephant beach is surrounded by corals. It is quite near to the beach and hardly 2 meters deep. There are lots of vendor running on the beach with the equipment. I got hold of one of them and went into the deep blue water. It was an amazing experience watching water world from up so close. I wish I had a go pro at that time to capture the beauty.

Elephant Beach 

Scary cloud formation. Looks like it's raining out there

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