Sea Voyage to the Andamans
Trip Start
Aug 06, 2007
1
47
59
Trip End
Jun 03, 2008
Kolkata (Calcutta), India
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Once it was time to get onto the boat we had one of the officers in charge of making sure all the tourists got on alright and such. He led us through the x-ray scans for our bags then took us up onto the boat (which was huge!) checked our tickets and showed us our rooms. Because it avoided standing in a queue that stretched around the block in Calcutta, Gisele and i took the 2nd least expensive ticket type which was nevertheless twice the price! So we were shown to a 6-bed dorm room, along with a half british half indian old man (couldn't understand his story, but he was there when we bought the tickets) and an indian couple who had soo much luggage it was just silly. It took a few hours for all 1300 passengers to board the boat, during which time we came to terms with the confined conditions we'd be in for the next 4days (3nights). We spoke to one tourist who said he slipped the officer dude 1000rupees to upgrade him from the same type of room as ours to a first class en suite! So Gisele decided to try her luck too! :P We didn't quite get that, but for no extra charge Gisele managed to get him to let us have our own 6-bed dorm room, key provided and everything! :D
So the rest of the trip we nearly didn't even leave our room! There was nothing really worth leaving it for. We booked (and paid for) 3 meals a day, but they were quite bad and we ended up maybe going to half of them. Some evenings we hung out with some of the other westerners on the boat, particularly these 2 german guys who to avoid army service were instead volunteering in india for a year and a british couple Harry & Millie who we ended up seeing a lot of during our time on the islands.
One thing worth mentioning was this officer dude. After giving us the room he also invited us to have a drink with us in his quarters any evening we wanted. Sounded innocent enough (tho i wasn't inclined on taking him up on it from the begining) and it started off being so. He spends 6months of every year at sea, sailing all around the world. He has been to almost every major port in the world and makes a pretty good wage doing it. He offered us whiskey and an assortment of snacks. His room was pretty nice, he had a double bed, a tv+dvd player, private bathroom etc. After a while his tone was becoming kinda repetitive and he was bragging and showing off more than anything else, so while the evening was enjoyable it left us with a bit of an odd feeling. Afterwards he simply became strange, inviting us every night and when we turned him down one evening he seemed soo disappointed! We had another drink with him on the last night, a brief one this time, and when we tried to go he kept pouring us more drinks etc. Gisele thought he was just really lonely, but together with a few innocent fibs he'd been telling us i could see he had some alterior motive - tho what that was was really unclear!
So we landed in Port Blair, the capital of the Andamans, in the late morning and spent about 2hrs clearing immigration. You received a 1month "visa" for the andamans on arrival, which restricted your movement to various islands - the rest were off limits as they still housed indiginous tribes that had not been interfered with by modern ppl. We took an autorickshaw to a different jetty, where we booked tickets for a boat to Havelock Island the place u go. Port Blair was a disgusting place, which despite being surrounded by a sea and hinting at beautiful surroundings was claustrophobic, humid, noisy and absolutely devoid of normal restaurants and guesthouses.
We had to wait about 4-5hrs till our boat to Havelock Island. But there was one saving grace, something without which our day would have gone very differently: the ticket office, where we waited, had air conditioning!!! And big signs saying NO SPITTING and other such normal things. We took turns with another couple, watching their bags while they went into town to get some food and vice versa. At aroun 2pm we boarded the boat, sitting on the top deck to watch as we leave Port Blair and arrive at the beautiful island of Havelock.
