432. Adventures in Andaman

I had booked my tickets on SpiceJet for the Andaman trip.  Sometime in December, I got an email from SpiceJet saying the Andaman flights are cancelled and they will be refunding my ticket price!  I called them and confirmed whether the flight was indeed cancelled or was it a spam mail. Found out that the cancellation mail was correct.  I immediately then booked by Indigo at a higher price.  Earlier, Sunil was reaching Andaman before me. Now I was reaching before him😊!  Luckily, SpiceJet refunded the full amount including the convenience fee that I was charged!

My wife and I reached Andaman by 9am. As soon as I landed and switched on my mobile, I got a call from a gentleman saying my friend had sent him and he was waiting just outside the airport exit gate.  Once we got our luggage and came out, he was standing there with a car. We boarded the car and he took us to the guest house.  The guest house had a hall with a dining room and a bedroom with attached bathroom. It was quite spacious. Since we had started early from Chennai, we were quite hungry. The gentleman asked the pantry guy to come and ask us what we wanted. He then left for the airport to pick Sunil and his wife.

By the time we finished breakfast, Sunil too had arrived. He was given the adjoining flat for his stay. We both then went to meet our friend in his office.  He was not busy and we had a nice time with him. He informed us that his boys will take care of our trip in Port Blair and they have planned something for us.  We decided on that day’s itinerary and finalized it.  We were supposed to visit the Cellular Jail, have snacks/tea at our friend’s house, visit the place where Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose unfurled the first Indian flag in Port Blair and visit the Corbyn’s Cove beach.

We freshened up and then had our lunch there at the guest house.  After lunch we proceeded to the Cellular jail in the car provided to us.  I had already seen the jail during my earlier trip.  There was a museum also in the jail that had details about the jail and the prisoners there.  After spending some time here, we toured the jail. Some photographs are depicted below.


It took about 1.5 hours to tour the entire jail, including the Veer Savarkar jail on the 2nd floor.  We had to meet our friend for snacks at his house. We decided that we would see the sound and light show at some later date as it would happen only at nightfall.  We then went to our friends’ home and had a good time there.  He also showed us his garden with various types of vegetables growing there.  From his home, we went to the Flag Point, where Netaji had hoisted the Indian National Flag for the first time in Indian soil in 1943.  Today a 150 foot-high flagpole stands here.

After visiting this, we headed to the Corbyn’s beach. I had spent 2 days here when I was in Port Blair last time.  Since the islands were out-of-bounds then, we spent 2 full days here doing water sports and idling on the beach.  By the time we reached this place, it was very dark.  We could not see anything here as everything was closed. We went near the beach using our mobile torches and came back😊!

Sometimes earlier, I called up the agent who was supposed to tour us the Havelock and Neil islands.  I wanted to know as to when and what time to reach the boat jetty for our tour.  She mumbled something and asked me to check with her boss and gave the number. I called that person who said that he is not aware of our trip and would check and let me know.  I then called another number, that I had got through mail, regarding this confusion. I was told that since I was yet to pay the balance amount, they had only blocked the boat tickets and not issued it. Immediately we made the balance payment and got the tickets issued.  I berated the agent as to why they did not inform us before so that we could have done the needful earlier itself😊!

That ended our first day of the tour.  We then came back to the guest house, had dinner and then went to sleep.  Early next morning we were sailing to Havelock.  Rest of the adventure in the next blog😊!

Adios till then!😊


Comments

  1. Anonymous4 April 2026 at 11:04

    So good to read about this and reminisce! I hope to have the same smile on my face after reading this again in few years?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4 April 2026 at 16:18

    I could imagine you enjoying the first day at Port Blair and meeting old friend with this detailed blog 👍

    ReplyDelete

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