India By The Road: October 2015

Trip to Andamans - Dussera 2015

Dussera Vacations 2015
There comes a time when you start feeling that you need to go somewhere. The daily work schedule starts taking its toll on you. As schools closed for Dussera, we decided do go somewhere with a beach. It was a toss up between Goa and Andamans. The thing going in favor of Goa was that I could drive there, but Goa beaches don't even hold a candle to Andamans beaches. So the decision was in favor of Andamans and that meant that driving was out of the window.

Here was the trip plan that we follows.

26-October-2015 Port Blair - Chennai - Bengaluru

Depending on the days of vacation, we decided to drop the Cellular Jain from the itinerary because we had been there in our earlier Trip. If you are going there for the first time, it is a must visit place. Here are some photos from my earlier trip to Cellular Jail.

Displays depicting prisoners

Model of Cellular Jail

Gallows

Savarkar Cell

Main Gate

Port Blair also has a very interesting aquarium. If one is going there for the first time, it is a must visit place.
If one is interested in beaches in Port Blair, then Corbyn Cove seems to be the popular destination. In my last trip, I visited the beach but it is nothing compared to other beaches in other islands in Andamans.

Andamans 2015, Day 9, Port Blair - Chennai - Bengaluru

26-October-2015
Now that we were out of room at 9:15 AM, we were in a fix so as what to do for next 5 hours. We decided to go to Cellular jail again for a visit but realized that that being monday most of the tourist establishments would be closed.
So we just decided to walk to the water sports complex and kill some time that way.

Hotel Building

You can walk down to the bay

Road to water sports complex

Temple on the way

View of the bay

Park has some military hardware

Param Veer Chakra (PVC) winners

Description of PVC award

Replica of the medal

Subhas Chandra Bose statue

Vijayanta Tank

Finally we got our flight to chennai and then connecting flight to Bengaluru after a layover of 5 hours at Chennai.

Andamans 2015, Day 8, Back to Port Blair

25-October-2015
This was the day to return back to Port Blair. We all along assumed that we will take up the morning ferry back to Port Blair, but the barefoot guys had booked 4 PM ferry back. The only problem with the barefoot resort is that it is impossible to extend the checkout because guests come at a fixed time and then you have to leave the room.
Nevertheless we somehow extended the checkout time till 12:30 and then we had to kill time till 2:45 PM when we had to leave for Jetty.
For our return journey we were booked into Makruzz and it is a faster ferry with around one and half hours of travel time.

Even Nicobar tents are made with material from marwar

Makruzz

We were back in Port Blair around 7 PM and just for change of hotel we had booked Hotel Sinclair. In hindsight, that was not a great plan. Here is my review of the hotel.

Andamans 2015, Day 7, Inglish Island, Scuba Dive

24-October-2015
This was the dive day. We were supposed to reach dive center early morning and the dive was planned for an island around one and half hours away from Havelock.
Barefoot Scuba are very professional about their job. We reached early, you have to fill some indemnity documentation and after that they explain the theoretical aspects of Scuba. Then we left for the scuba site. After around one and half hour we arrived at a small island called Inglis island.
Initially there is around 15-20 minutes of training with actual equipment where they cover things like what to do if you lose the regulator, how to remove water from goggles etc. Then the actual dive starts which lasts around 35-40 minutes depending on the comfort level of the diver.
Each individual is accompanied with one instructor and they take care of fiddling with finer aspects of the scuba equipment like adjusting the BCD etc.
Here is a complete video of scuba dive followed by some pictures from the day.