The Andaman Experience

I have to admit, I have just had the most amazing two weeks of my life. The Andaman Islands are simply breathtaking, there is no paradise I can imagine that exceeds the beauty of the beaches and sea, the reefs and the jungles, the remoteness of the islands and how pristine they are.

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From Pondicherry, I stayed one night in Chennai before heading to the airport early in the mornig, only to find my Air Deccan flight had been cancelled. Almost all the passengers rescheduled for the next day, but about 10 of us hung around, hoping perhaps the plane might be fine. Instead, after 2 hours waiting and arguing, to the point I almost gave up and went back into town for another night, they put us on a Jet Airways flight to Port Blair!
Port Blair is the hub of the Andaman chain of Islands, closer to Myanmar than to India, situated on Middle Andaman Island. I didn't stick around and took a boat 2 hours to Havelock Island where the diving occurs. On Havelock, all the beaches are numbered, from #1 to #7. #1 is where the boat jetty is located, #3 to #5 are further along, and #7, preportedly the best beach in Asia and the second best beach in the world, is on the opposite side of the island.
Checked into the Emerald Gecko resort for the first four days, where I met James, a friendly Englishman, and Marco, an affable Italian. The two were hilarious together, almost like a bickering couple although they had only met a couple of days before! I ended up checking out of the Emerald Gecko as it was costing me to much, and moved to the much lower budget Sunrise Resort a short way along, where I met a nice bunch of other travellers, including Sonaar (an American born Indian), Tina, the German trio (Tino, Clemens, Gregor), Asim and his girlfriend Amba (both from Auroville!), Mikael and Ahout, two Israelis. The first day I arrived there, they were holding the inaugural 'Havelock Games' that involved chopping open coconuts and filling as many glasses with the water, swimming and running! It was also Tina's birthday which we celebrated that night with a nutella and biscuit pancake with candles for her bitrhday cake!
Since it was end of season (the monsoon comes end of May), the group trickled away slowly, leaving the German trio and me left before I took my leave of the Andamans.
The diving was superb. I went with Dive India, just next door, and met Vinnie, a local Indian instructor who owns the place. Turns out he goes to Koh Tao during the monsoon season to teach diving at a shop 5 minutes from Ban's Dive Resort where I'm working! So I'll be seing him there in a month's time. I did about 17 dives off Havelock Island, amongst the top 3 places in the world for divng, and I have to say it deserves it. The variety of life is incredible, the corals undamaged, reaching for hundreds of meters in all directions. On my second day diving, Johnny , one of the local Divemasters, although a Karan by blood (from Myanmar), and I spotted a dugong (sea cow, similar to a manatee) (click for info)!!!!!!!!! I never expected to see one, EVER. Forget about whale sharks, these are even rarer to scuba dive with as they are incredibly shy and highly endangered, nearing extinction. It had to be the highlight of my time there... Incredible!! Even Vinnie who's dived there nearly every day for 6 years has never seen one! I've swam with dolphins(!!!), eagle rays, seen manta rays, 6 varieties of triggerfish, nudibranches, loggerhead sea turtles, a 70m shipwreck, night diving and sooo much more. But the best was still to come!
Vinnie invited me, as I'm a Divemaster, to join on a day of exploration diving for free, to discover new dive sites around Havelock! The diving here is so unexplored, some of the potential sites too far away for daily diving (4-5 hours by dunghi, the small long boats they use). End of this year though, Vinnie hopes to complete building of his large fast dive boat, and wanted to find new sites. So Robert (a cool Austrian Divemaster working there for a short time), Johnny and I headed out one day on the dunghi armed with a map of the sea depths and GPS. The first dive we found an above average reef, with HUGE barrel sponges (we named it 'Sponge City', original huh?), and the second dive..... the second dive.... Wow.... We dived off Middle Button Island, a place never dived before, to what was the most amazing reef I have ever seen. I remember scouting the area and Robert sticking his head into the water with a mask on as the boat was moving to see the rocks below and he just came straight up after two seconds screaming "It's F*CKING BEAUTIFUL! STOP THE BOAT!". In fact, Johnny, the local diver living and working there, agreed it was the most amazing reef he had seen, and WE found it! WE were the first divers ever to dive there! We dived the site twice, and on the second dive on that reef, Robert and I managed a 104 minute dive on one tank of air (most dives last 50 minutes)! So that was quite an achievement! But most of all, we got to name this reef, and I christened it Dr. J's Reef. Why? DRJ. Dominic, Robert, Johnny. So there's a huge coral reef in the Andamans named after me, Robert and Johnny, and named by me! Woohoo!!!!
The final day on Havelock, I headed to #7, and by all means, I'm supposed to tell you it is rubbish, full of huge sand flies, souvenir sellers and tons of tourists. But I won't lie. It's almost like something out of 'The Beach', the book and movie. I'm not supposed to tell people about it (some of the locals mentioned especially to Israelis). But it's stunning. The main beach itself is rather standard, but round the corner a few hundred meters away hidden from view is a deep emerald lagoon, embraced by a steep bank of sand. You can easily see why it is voted the second best beach in the world, and the top beach in Asia. It's empty. No one is there (ok, maybe 4 to 5 people).
So there it is.... I've had such an amazing experience. Of dugongs and dolphins. Stunning beaches. Reading in a hammock. Playing cards with the German trio (I taught them Chinese poker - Chaw Dai Di). Discovering new, uncharted coral reefs. There's so much more I want to share with you, but this entry would just be so long... It was certainly the perfect tonic to the two weeks of troubles before I arrived!! I feel refreshed, alive, and so, so happy that I've had the chance to experience the Andamans. Especially before it goes downhill, and unfortunately it will. Soon. They're filming 'Shantaram' there (the book I mentioned before). It'll star Johnny Depp and they will shoot the Goa scenes on Havelock. Why? I don't know, but I've seen what 'The Beach' did to Maya Bay and the rest of the Phi Phi Islands. So if you plan to go to the Andamans, you'd better go NOW. The islands are the most pure, unspoilt place I've ever been to, and it'll disappear quicker than you can blink.
I'm back on the mainland now, in Kolkata (Calcutta), and will watch the Champion's League final tonight (ARSENAL!!!!!) then spend a day or two exploring before heading up to Darjeeling ("Tea, Mr. Braaiithewaaaaite?" - Penny will laugh at that!).