After six weeks of traveling around India, in Rajasthan and the Andaman Islands, I have more than one story to tell. Instead of a blog to end all blogs and permanently damage all reader relationships by outpacing Dickens for wordcounts, I’ll hold my tongue as much as possible.
The first installment is about the Andamans in general. The next will be about padauk, a wood that has a certain significance to me. Finally, I think one about Rajasthani Castle Forts is in order. I may throw in a nightmares-of-Indian-travel tale as well, but my stamina may even flag by then.
The Andaman Islands are a marvelous mix of historical oddities and truly pristine wilderness, one of the last places on earth where stone-age and pre-stone age people live relatively undisturbed. Nobody really knows what the Jarawa, Shompen or Sentinalese are like. Some still fire arrows at anyone who tries to contact them. Even the names they use to describe themselves aren’t known by the rest of the world. The few photos of them are marvelously disturbing, as their ethnic heritage seems amazingly diverse, from Africa to Burma and Siberia.
The natural habitat on many islands are equally undisturbed, in spite of immigration from the Indian mainland. The undisturbed bits are visible from all the tiny human settlements. The Andaman and Nicobars are a submerged mountain chain. They have reefs, but also huge rainforests that grow right up to the beach, and mangrove shorelines. This makes them, um, different, from most tropical islands, many of which are coral atolls covered in coconut and palm trees. Sme of the photos will show this lovely oddity.
The pristine beaches and somewhat pristine coral reefs (damaged by the tsunami in 2004) are the main tourist attractions. Who could resist? So we went. Here’s a mostly visual description of where we went, what we did. Sadly, I forgot my camera, so these are shots taken by friends. And I can’t show the best bits, the coral reefs that we snorkeled twice every day we were there, as I had no underwater camera equipment. Sorry.
This is Port Blair, the main port, from the air, looking Southeast. It's the big city in the middle On the left is Ross Island, where the British created their own bit of England in the 19th century, complete with tennis courts, gothic stone church and bungalows in the Arts and Crafts style (or a near enough approximation). Bottom left of Port Blair you may be able to see the Cellular Jail, notorious in Indian history as this was where the British sent the political prisoners during their rule. Conditions were horrible, to say the least.
These are two views of Havelock Island from our ferry. If it looks pristine and untouched, it largely still is, though not if the hotel industry has its way. They're building as furiously as bribery allows them. No one could tell me if the dead trees on the beach were a result of the 2004 tsunami or something else, but I think the tsunami is to blame. It didn't topple the trees, but it undermined their root systems, took away the soil closest to the beach.
Our hotel really wasn't a hotel, more a group of tents, huts and shacks (can't find that photograph) in a coconut grove just off beach #5. This shot looks from the beach into the resort, to a little hut where we had dinner now and again. The decorations are for Christmas and New Year.
This is the beach right next to our hotel during high tide. Please ooh and aah over the color of the water, which is perfectly clear, over white sand. clumps of sea grass and corals. The water here is quite shallow--no more than eight feet deep at high tide, though shallower in many places--as it's a bay between islands. You can swim for close to a kilometer before finding the deep water channel.
This is the same beach, #5, at low tide. Now you can literally walk a kilometer out in the bay. Closer, the clumps of coral are exposed. Hermit crabs were the most fun to catch, though the bigger ones pinched in frustration at being disturbed.
Just a marvelous slightly-offshore tree on beach #5.
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This little shrine has a lovely story. Tribes along the Burmese coast built rafts, put shrines or houses on them, and set them adrift. Many of them end up in the Andamans. Fishermen come across them floating along the coast. They're towed back and sold for their bamboo. The rafts are made from big bamboo (8 in diameter and up) logs, which is valuable to the locals as it doesn't grow on the islands. Another much larger raft (sorry no picture) had two stories: a shack below with a fire pit and a platform above, I'd imagine for sleeping.
I heard many accounts about the rafts. One theory suggested the rafts were designed to lure demons away from families beset with troubles. You build the raft, live on it for a while, assume the demon lives with you, then set the raft afloat when the demon is sleeping and escape yourself. Demon awakes miles out to sea. The little shrine suggests some other use, probably not involving human passengers, as the construction was pretty crude (just bunches of different-length bamboo lashed together).
At night, someone would always burn beach debris (coconut palms, leaves, driftwood) to keep the sandfly population down. It made for excellent fun, and an opportunity to create light angles with a slow aperture.
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And this little fellow washed up in the night. I think it's some kind of trumpet fish. We saw them swimming in groups above the reefs. Nice shape but boring colors. Lovely rows of sharp little teeth, though.
It wasn't long before we hired a boat to go snorkeling at a good site. This is South Button Island. From a distance it really looks like a button. Again, I thought I had an image from afar, but can't find it now. The reefs are all around the island, though on one side, the island plunges down vertically, so you can swim by a wall of rock with gloom below. Very atmospheric.
Here are some brave kids, jumping in with no seeming bottom, and no real shore to swim to. I found it mildly disconcerting, this being my first real snorkeling adventure. A few months previous, I swam around Lakshadweep's reefs, but without flippers or a proper mask, since the government resort doesn't keep such things to rent (and there's no other source on the island). Nevertheless, I adored it.
South Button was simply magnificent. I can name very little of what I saw, except a half-eated sea snake, millions of the oddest looking neon-colored fish, and the wildest forests of coral. The Sea of Green in the Beatles' movie Yellow Submarine featured really bizarre creatures. I thought they were flights of fancy due to overstimulation from LSD. Now I know the animators had simply snorkeled around reefs, and based their creatures on fact.
The island itself is very simple, very rural. There are two roads from the jetty, one leading North, the other South. You pass by farms, animals and Indians living much the way they do on the mainland. There are the same animals, ame lazy stray dogs, same bedraggled buildings and same smiles on faces. I do think, though, the tuktuk drivers are bit more bored than usual. As we were a large groupwe often took two tuktuks to the other side of the island. Invariably, the drivers raced each other. I come away in awe that they never lifted a wheel off the ground, ran off the road or screeched tires. This isn't to say there aren't plenty of accidents. A jeep ran off the road right in front of our hotel. Took 20 people to push his jeep back right.
Elephant beach, lovely isolated and with excellent snorkeling right off the beach was a 40 minute boat ride from the jetty. There's no road to the beach, and the forest path to reach it is about 3 km long, part of it through a tidal swamp. So we took local boats there. The boats were leaky affairs with incredibly noisy motors. This was the only downside, as you either held your ears or reached the beach unable to hear anything.
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This is a lighthouse on the way to Elephant beach.
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And this is our boat waiting for us.
Elephant beach was truly lovely, made mysterious by all the dead trees. Some of them displayed the most amazing grain (yes, the woodworker in me is surfacing). Sad to see them slowly rot.
But the coconuts will sprout anew and replace them in time.
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I've saved the best for last, which is Beach #7. It has a bit of fame, considered one of the nicest in the world, but so far is still amazingly undeveloped (though for how long, who can tell). This shot gives some sense of the length and gentle curve. Just off the beach is a desnse forest of ancient trees. You always had a choice of cool shade or hot sun. While there were no elephants on Elephant beach, there were a few on Beach #7. For 20 rupees, you could have a ride.
This is a little cove on the Western end of Beach #7. We most often settled here for the day. The kids had great fun in the surf, and excellent snorkeling was just off the beach. I saw two hawksbill turtles here, one for quite a long time as it was resting on the bottom and didn't seem disturbed by my presence.
Of course we would stay until sunset, then catch the city bus or a tuktuk back to our place.
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And the sunsets are somehwat memorable on Beach 7.
The tribes of the Andaman Islands are neither 'stone age' or 'pre-stone age'. They are as contemporary as you or I - just different.
Posted by: Miriam | January 11, 2008 at 06:18 AM