Dreaming of Mangroves

Vaibhav,
About Nicobar - I agree - if that were a possibility, we would join you!

Good report and pics Theyyam. Such blue waters and I love that elephant on the beach!

Thank you. I have many photos of the elephant. Coming later....

Great thread TD.

I always dream of hanging out in front of a beach like the ones in your pictures. Have started planning for the Islands in the next winter already, thanks to your fantastic report.

Thank you, Saugata. There is a faster way to reach the islands now, with the Makruzz. If you are in a hurry, that is perhaps a good idea.

http://www.makruzz.com/site/
http://www.and.nic.in/tourism/howtoreach.php

A book which I thoroughly recommend on the Andamans, and which I purchased on Havelock itself, is:

"The Land of Naked People (Encounters with Stone Age Islanders)" by Madhusree Mukerjee. (Published by Penguin, India, in 2003, for sale in the Subcontinent and Singapore only)

She pays tribute to the Anthropological Survey of Calcutta in her Acknowledgements for the use of their library; she is from Kolkata herself but now lives in the States and works there as a journalist.

She first visited the Andamans in 1995. In her book she quotes her thoughts from that initial visit (one of many):


Mukerjee quotes an Italian voyager:

Here is a photograph of the gardens inside the Barefoot resort:





We were very comfortable staying there. It is very close to the sea. The gardens are well tended and so are the individual bungalows which serve as bedrooms with attached balconies and rather luxurious fittings. Mosquito nets are provided as well as spraying the rooms at dusk. The main problem are the sand flies on the beach. This is my main 'bugbear' (sorry for the pun) which slightly marred my enjoyment.

The resort is called "barefoot" because it is just that; the dining area requests that guests abandon their shoes.

The food is somewhat monotonous. But, given the surroundings, this is a minor complaint. They do not have (or at least, they did not have - five years ago - during our visit) much of a choice. Three dishes or four to choose from daily. Almost the same dishes would be repeated the next day, and the next. Their thali was delicious. (I have eaten much better elsewhere though.)

Many visitors did not eat at the resort; they preferred to walk a little way to the shacks where fresh fish was being cooked. That is probably a good idea. Some visitors did their own fishing and requested that their food be cooked. I am not sure whether it ever arrived.... ( I suspect the cook only made pure veg.) Certainly our travelling companion, B., was satisfied with the pure veg credentials of the cook!

When is your next trip due then?

I knew that you were writing this report belatedly !

I am yet to try it! I am scared of implementing new things !

@ Naveena,

I don't know when our next trip would be to the Andamans. We have already in the pipeline a return visit to Arunachal Pradesh; plus a visit to Nagaland; and a long delayed visit to Kolkata to see friends - should be happening in winter '12/spring '13.

I planned for Neil Island a couple of years ago but in the end we made a second trip to Sikkim instead, due to the unseasonably warm weather in spring/early summer 2010.

In fact, I was researching the information for a friend from London who is going to an Indian wedding in Bangalore in November and then spending a week travelling. She and her husband have already been to Goa. They are considering going to Havelock.

Today, perhaps, I will scan the negatives of the elephant photos. I want to compare uploaded scanned negatives with uploaded re-photographed prints. I am probably talking rubbish to those of you who have grown up with digital cameras. I am only in possession of a digital camera for the last two to three years! Before that, it was Point n Shoot, negatives, prints, sticking photos in albums, all that jazz. It is akin to the difference between writing on a computer and writing on paper with a pencil. Both are valid.

Not at all, I too grew up with a Yashika Camera (my dad's favorite). I too have gone thru 'negatives, prints, sticking photos in albums, all that jazz. ' Infact I have about 3536 photographs scanned and stored on the hard disk ! All of them taken before our 'digital camera's' arrival!

hai hai, yyam - photus and write up... as always
and especially so - because its all about the beach [you can say that word in bengali too - would be just as relevant ]

thank you !!



von day me too !!
:brishti

Thanks dear Brishti !

Here are some more photos from the trip.

And a couple more:

Wonderful photographs!!!

Naveenaji reminds me of my own Yashika - bought out of my first earning in 1990- excellent companion of all my trips, though tours were very seldom then.