We decided to go to the Andaman Islands as we'd heard a few people talk about them and once we'd looked at some photos online it was too hard to resist. White beaches fringed with palm trees, a desert island type experience. The Andamans are actually quite a large group of islands but our plan was to spend most time on Havelock Island which has most of the resorts and then move to Little Andaman much much further south. Interestingly, some of the islands are home to ancient tribes who have had little or no contact with the outside world. 

So to get to our first destination we flew from Kolkatta to Port Blair and then a boat the following day to Havelock Island. We arrived early morning and checked into a little beach hut. Was simple but clean and even had a nice little veranda to watch the world go by. We could also see the sea from our hut. The beach was only a matter of metres away, lovely! We spent the first few days relaxing and did a bit of sunbathing... I actually got a bit burnt on the first day. It turned out to be either WAY to hot or cloudy to sunbathe for the majority of our stay. After that however things seemed to go from bad to worse for us. To start with we hadn't had time to book our onward journey from Kolkatta so needed to try and book a couple of trains using the super slow and overpriced internet (£1.15 for 15 minutes!!!). You have to book your trains at least two weeks in advance in India or they get booked up and we were due to stay in the Andamans for two weeks!. After an hour of trying we gave up as I was close to throwing the monitor out of the window because nothing would load. I tried a few days later at another internet café and still came away poorer and ticketless. In fact I got so frustrated I demanded we went and bought beer from the off licence to cheer me up... Apparently there was no beer on the entire island due to the resupply boats not arriving... uhhhh what!? The only cold alcoholic beverage they had was red wine!? It sufficed and I felt a little bit better. Though the beer issue remained for our stay due to later bad weather which prevented any further boats arriving. 


In order to explore the island a bit easier we hired bicycles for 3 days. They were handy for getting to the shops (or shop) about 10 minutes away and one day we thought we'd ride across the island to use another beach. It had recently won an award in Time Magazine for being one of the best in the world! Now all we had to guide us was a cartoon map given to us by a tuk tuk driver, from it we'd estimated the beach was about twice as far as the village was from our hut, 20 to 30 minutes max. 1 Hour 30 minutes later we arrived soaked through with sweat and thoroughly annoyed that we put our trust in a cartoon map!! Lots of gruelling uphills that we couldn't manage and had to walk up with our cheapo bikes because they had no gears! Plus Tom's brakes didn't work. We've both never been so hot and sweaty!! So we spent 2 hours cooling down on the beach (it was cloudy, typical!) and then had to head back earlier than planned as we now knew how long it was going to take! A journey we couldn't get out of and were dreading as we had no other way of taking our bikes back! Doh! 

 
The next thing we had to contend with was the weather. After the initial 3 or 4 days of sun and light showers it started to become wetter and wetter. We knew it was low season and had expected a few showers but it was getting much more frequent than we'd expected. According to one of the restaurateurs we met, there was a cyclone in the area which had sped up the arrival of the monsoon rains. It got so bad that our hotel owner advised us not to try and get to Little Andaman as we might get a boat there but getting back may be more difficult as the weather was only going to get worse. We took the decision not to attempt it as we couldn't afford to risk missing our return flight. Frustrating as Hannah had spent an hour queueing to get the ferry ticket over there and this also meant we lost our money. Hmmph. We were also due to go snorkelling but this didn't happen either due to the bad weather. So we stayed an extra 4 nights on Havelock and decided to go back to the beach on the other side of the island. This time on a scooter! Have that crappy bikes! However getting the scooter took three attempts on three different mornings as the only man who had a licence to operate a rental business in May was either away from his shop or didn't have any scooters in – Hannah was getting really annoyed by the 3rd day of trying. Especially after we had arranged to meet the scooter guy and he didn't turn up. You have to wonder sometimes how things ever work/get done in India! Finally on our last day we managed to get one! As we set off there was beautiful sunshine. Finally a nice day at a lovely beach! By the time we arrived 30 minutes later the rain was pouring out of the sky! We sat and waited for two hours for it to clear. It finally did and we managed to walk for about 20 minutes up the beach only to see huge huge rain clouds in the distance, you could see how heavy the rain was....heading our way. God dammit! We managed to get back to a shelter just in the nick of time (or so we thought). Along with the heaviest rain came huge gusts of wind which just blew the rain right in and soaked us anyway. There was nothing else we could do but huddle like penguins with our backs to the rain with around five other Indian families plus a number of stray dogs. Great day at the beach!. Sadly this was no passing shower and after an hour of waiting we gave up and braved getting a further soaking on our journey back to our hut, very miserable! 

 
We headed back to Port Blair on the ferry in torrential rain and high winds. After never being sea sick before Hannah spent the entire two hour journey standing outside in the rain clinging to the rails. Oh dear! 

 
All in all the Andaman Islands were not as relaxing as they could have been, mostly frustrating. We did manage to spend some time on the beach which was quite beautiful if you didn't look too closely and see the glass and plastic bottles that skirted the tree line. We managed to devour a number of books between us due to lots of time sat in from the rain! We did find two amazing restaurants which we spent a lot of time at and it was quite a nice change of pace from the rest of India. Hopefully we'll get some better beach action in Thailand!