Showing posts with label Andamans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andamans. Show all posts

26 Mar - 30 Mar 2011 Port Blair






South Asia
Republic of Incredible India, the world's biggest democrazy
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
South Andaman Island
Port Blair
Hotel Shah-N-Shah +913192233696
Comfortable and clean enough double room (no. 111) with a great private terrace, overlooking the motley roofs of the noisy covered market, for INR 500.- or US$ 11.10 per night. Friendly and honest staff.
From the family-run hotel’s written rules and regulations: “The guests are requested to keep the doors of room open when any visitor is inside; visitors are not allowed at odd hours.”


Click below for an interactive road map of the Hotel Shah-N-Shah in Port Blair, which we would recommend, and for directions:









Catching up on long overdue online admin work (at our favourite internet joint: Nirman’s reliable e-Cafe near the clock tower ecafeandaman@gmail.com +913192230551), enjoying cheap and genuine South Indian and Bengali food (our favourite place for excellent breakfast, lunch and dinner: the ACC [Andaman Cooperative Cafeteria] near the local market; beer: fortified ice-cold Cannon Ten Thousand Strong Beer for INR 80.- per large bottle) and planning/preparing our upcoming trip through exotic Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Kanyakumari, Tiruchendur, Rameshwaram, Madurai, Tiruchirapalli, Thanjavur, Chidambaram, Mamallapuram), famous for its colossal wedge-shaped pyramids aka gopuram, often covered with garishly painted gods, goddesses and mythological creatures.



Laundering for INR 10.- per piece (washed, dried and frayed) in the hotel's efficient in-house dhobi where our dirty laundry was shown some old-fashioned discipline: separated, soaped and given a very good thrashing to beat the Andamans’ dirt out of it.



Crossing the Bay of Bengal again and flying uneventfully with Jet Airways (“India's Finest International Airline - Giving the World a Better Choice in the Skies”) in a brand-new Boeing 737-800 from the Andaman Islands to Madras aka Chennai (Kamaraj Terminal of Chennai International Airport) for INR 4,263.- or US$ 96.- per person, all inclusive, and taking the rugged but cheap suburban train for only INR 6.- per person from the airport's convenient Tirusulam Train Station to Chennai’s crowded and mucky Egmore suburb, one the city's busiest neighbourhoods.


Click below for more blog posts about the Andamans

Click below for a summary of this year's travels


Facing Andamans
© Konni & Matt


Recommended products - click below for your Amazon order from the United Kingdom:
 
For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here 
For Amazon deals from the United States, please click here 
For Amazon deals from Canada, please click here

25 Mar - 26 Mar 2011 Rangat






South Asia
Republic of Incredible India, the world's biggest democrazy
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
Middle Andaman Island
Rangat Bazaar
R.K. Lodge +913192274237
Adequate twin room for only INR 400.- or US$ 8.90 per night.



Click below for an interactive road map of the R.K. Lodge in Rangat Bazaar and for directions:










Exploring the filthy and rather non-descript one-horse town Rangat Bazaar, taking thereafter the A & N State Transport Service’s rugged and run-down express bus (c. 170 km including two short crossings on car ferries, 9 hours, INR 95.- or US$ 2.10 per person) via Bharatang Island in a convey together with other south-bound vehicles and with an armed cop on board to the South Andaman Island and meeting a couple of aboriginal Jarawas inside the Jarawa Tribal Reserve, indigenous inhabitants of the Andamans, who subsist as hunter-gatherers and live on fish, turtles, turtle eggs, pigs, fruit, honey and roots.



Click below for more blog posts about the Andamans
Recommended gear - click below for your Amazon order from Germany:

For Amazon bargains from the United States, please click here
For Amazon bargains from Canada, please click here
For Amazon bargains from the United Kingdom, please click here

23 Mar - 25 Mar 2011 Long Island






South Asia
Republic of Incredible India, the world's biggest democrazy
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
Long Island
Basic and adequate bamboo bungalow with private terrace and attached bathroom, for INR 700.- or US$ 15.60 per night. Friendly staff.

Click below for an interactive road map of the Blue Planet Lodge on Long Island, which we would recommend, and for directions:








Teaming up with fellow backpackers Anna & Hector from Barcelona, Punam & Santraj from Darjeeling and Amit from Tel Aviv, hiking together along the secluded coast to the sandy and clean beach of the very scenic Lalaji Bay and noticing en-route how the ruthless timber industry has cleaned off in the early 1990s the once beautiful primary forests in the southern part of Long Island, leaving many ugly, scar-like clearings and the unsightly, crumbling concrete foundations of a dismantled plywood mill. 

“My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.” 

Embarking on MV “Jolly Buoy”, dodging the fare for the short boat ride to Rangat Bay and sharing thereafter a worn 4x4 Mahindra jeep (INR 20.- or US$ 0.45 per person) to Rangat Bazaar, a ramshackle sprawl ranged around two rows of chai shops and general stores with a lively night market, located in the southeast corner of the Middle Andaman Island and divided by the strategic Andaman Trunk Road.



 Click below for more blog posts about the Andamans
26 Mar - 30 Mar 2011 Port Blair


Facing India
© Konni & Matt


Recommended books - click below for your Amazon order from the United States:

For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here
For Amazon deals from Canada, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United Kingdom, please click here

04 Mar - 23 Mar 2011 Havelock






South Asia
Republic of Incredible India, the world's biggest democrazy
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
Havelock Island
Beach No. 5
Gold Star Beach Resort +919476015038
Basic and adequate beach bungalow with private terrace and attached bathroom, for only INR 600.- or US$ 13.30 per night. Of course, no wifi. Indifferent staff.


Click below for an interactive road map of the Gold Star Beach Resort on Havelock Island and for directions:










Living the good life of blissful beach bums at Beach No. 5 on Havelock’s east coast, a low-budget bamboo-shtetl where the Star of David reigns and where kosher or not-so-kosher Israeli junk-food menus are thankfully written in Hebrew (e.g. “Israel Salad”, “Sabich”, "Hummus in Pita"), and enjoying: (i) the white and clean sand beaches, albeit infested with millions of sandflies, (ii) the turquoise and shallow lagoons, albeit packed with lumps of broken coral, resulting in all but impossible swimming during low tide, and (iii) the green tropical rainforests, albeit dotted with hundreds of rubbish dumps, consisting mainly of thousands of empty water bottles from the top seller Bisleri (for which independent tests revealed levels of pesticide concentration up to 100 times higher than EU norms).


DM Konni: Donning my scuba gear, diving with Barefoot Scuba’s rather inexperienced PADI instructor Martina (INR 1,575.- or US$ 35.- per single dive from a converted dungi fishing boat; dive sites: Johnny’s Gorge, The Wall and Aquarium), floating over desolate coral cemeteries in this previously pristine marine environment, witnessing at first hand the death knell of the planet’s coral reefs (the worst coral die-off that I have ever seen, driven by human-induced global warming but still unashamedly denied by the unscrupulous sales reps of the dive industry and explained as eternal natural cycle where the corals would recover within the next few years) and learning that the sea-surface temperature had risen by almost 5 degrees only ten months ago (from a long-term average of 28°C to a peak of 33°C) which changed a once colourful u/w world into a monochromatic tristesse; good luck Terra Titanic...


Exploring Havelock's picturesque sandy beaches, taking more than one dip and snorkelling (i) off the wild and hard-to-reach Elephant Beach aka Hathi Tapu in the northwest of the island which once had a rich coral reef formation (now bleached and dead but still with plenty of colourful reef fish since it may take up to three years for some fish species to be affected by the loss of their coral habitat), (ii) off the scenic and famous Radhnagar Beach aka Beach No. 7 on the island’s west side, a 2-km long arc of perfect and untrodden white sand backed by stands of 30-m high mahua trees with trunks that grow along the ground for many metres before they begin to grow vertically, and (iii) off the rather remote Kalapathar Beach, with an old elephant training camp, in the east of Havelock Island.



"And everybody knows that the Plague is coming 

Everybody knows that it's moving fast 
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman 
Are just a shining artifact of the past 
Everybody knows the scene is dead 
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed 
That will disclose 
What everybody knows..."

Enduring a week-long period of almost uninterrupted downpours with a daily rainfall average of about 200 mm during this supposedly dry northeast monsoon season (the average precipitation for Port Blair for the whole month of March is less than 30 mm) and a dense blanket of clouds without a single ray of sun as if the first nuclear winter had already begun, hearing in the news about a massive offshore quake which had caused a devastating tsunami and a major emergency in an atomic power plant in Fukushima/Japan (25 years after Chernobyl/Belarus) and wondering if the ongoing rains are already a radioactive fall-out from Japan, trying to keep sane on this lost planet with the help of an almost unlimited supply of VAT 69 (INR 615.- or US$ 13.70 per 700-ml bottle at the local wine shop near the island jetty) and listening to Peter Schilling’s Die Wueste Lebt.



Matt: Suffering a severe bout of moquito-borne dengue fever aka breakbone fever (my symptoms: flu-like fever, nausea, rashes, bone pain, nose bleeding), lasting several days, and being treated symptomatically with Konni's tender, love and care, but not with aspirin since this could worsen the bleeding. 

Saying goodbye to Havelock, a heavily commercialised but still nice enough must-go place on the Indian part of the ever-developing Banana Pancake Trail (with acquisitive locals, bland pseudo-Indian food and a rubbish-strewn environment), and embarking on MV “Rangat” (fare for non-islanders: INR 195.- or US$ 4.30 per person in seat class, one way) for a pleasant boat ride through Ritchie’s Archipelago to Long Island (island tax for foreigners: INR 20.- or US$ 0.45 per person).



Click below for more blog posts about scuba diving in Southeast Asia
22 Feb - 10 Mar 2013 Pulau Tioman
26 Sep - 24 Oct 2013 Tanjung Karang
20 Mar - 07 Apr 2012 Iboih Beach
16 Aug - 15 Sep 2011 Tanjung Karang
04 Sep - 05 Sep 2011 Lebo

Click below for more blog posts about the Andaman Islands
26 Mar - 30 Mar 2011 Port Blair
25 Mar - 26 Mar 2011 Rangat
23 Mar - 25 Mar 2011 Long Island
02 Mar - 04 Mar 2011 Port Blair

Click below for a summary of this year's travels
2011 Map Konni & Matt



Recommended books - click below for your Amazon order from the United States:

For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here
For Amazon bargains from Canada, please click here
For Amazon bargains from the United Kingdom, please click here

02 Mar - 04 Mar 2011 Port Blair






South Asia
Republic of Incredible India, the world's biggest democrazy
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
South Andaman Island
Port Blair
Hotel Shah-N-Shah +913192233696
Comfortable double room (no. 111) with a great private terrace, for only INR 500.- or US$ 11.10 per night.


Click below for an interactive road map of the Hotel Shah-N-Shah in Port Blair, which we would recommend, and for directions:










Exploring Port Blair’s Aberdeen Bazaar, a bustling commercial hub and melting pot of people and cultures with many food stalls which sell everything from spicy samosas and hot chapattis to lekker thalis and delicious sweets, and noticing the odd time-table for sun rises (05:30 a.m. local time) and sun sets (05:30 p.m. local time) since all the 572 Andaman & Nicobar islands, islets and rocks belong to the same time zone as the Indian motherland (Indian Standard Time) and all the A & N clocks tick accordingly.
“India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.” 


Embarking on a rusty piece of scrap metal with a still powerful enough diesel engine, the proud MV “Wandoor” (fare for non-islanders: INR 195.- or US$ 4.30 per person in seat class, one way), and enjoying tremendously the 3-hr long trip through the aquamarine waters of the Bay of Bengal from Port Blair’s Phoenix Jetty via a short stopover at Neil Island (the vegetable bowl of the Andamans) to Havelock Island and thereafter negotiating a short ride with a Bajaj three-wheeler rickshaw (INR 50.- or US$ 1.10) to Vijaynagar Beach aka "Beach No. 5" on Havelock's east coast, just opposite John Lawrence Island.



Click below for more blog posts about the Andamans
26 Mar - 30 Mar 2011 Port Blair

Recommended gear - click below for your Amazon order from Canada:

For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United States, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United Kingdom, please click here