Editor’s Letter: Andaman & Nicobar Islands

Every January, somebody in our small editorial room says the same thing: let us start the year somewhere warm. This year nobody argued. Our first issue of 2022 goes to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the long arc of green that runs down the Bay of Bengal, closer to Myanmar and Indonesia than to most of mainland India. It is a place many of us know from postcards and honeymoon albums. It is also a place that rewards anyone willing to look a little longer than a postcard allows.

Why the islands, and why now

January sits in the heart of the dry season in the Andamans. The north-east monsoon has usually eased by then, the sea around Havelock and Neil tends to be calm, and visibility underwater is often at its best. Days are warm rather than punishing, evenings are soft, and the light at Radhanagar Beach in the late afternoon is the kind that makes even a phone camera look talented. It is, in short, the season the islands were made for, and the season most travellers aim for.

There is another reason. After two difficult years, travel within India has become, for many readers, the most comfortable way to see somewhere new. The islands are a domestic flight away for most of us, yet they feel like another country: different trees, different food, a different pace and a sea that changes colour by the hour. We wanted an issue that honoured that sense of distance without pretending the place is empty or untouched. It is neither.

What you will find in this issue

We begin with the essentials. Our guide to the top tourist destinations walks through the names you will hear again and again, from Port Blair and Ross Island to Havelock, Neil, Baratang and Diglipur, and helps you decide which belong on a first trip. A companion piece on the best time to visit sets out the seasons honestly, monsoon included, so you can choose dates with open eyes.

The islands are home to some of the oldest communities in the world, and we have tried to write about them with care. Our article on the tribes of Andaman and Nicobar explains who the Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Onge, Sentinelese, Shompen and Nicobarese are, and why their lands are protected. Read it alongside our do’s and don’ts, which covers the practical side of respect: what not to photograph, what not to buy, which areas need permits and why plastic has no place on these beaches.

For planners, our complete guide to a perfect Andaman trip puts flights, ferries and a sensible day-by-day rhythm in one place, while our piece on travelling to Andaman by ship is for those who want the long, slow sea route from the mainland. History comes through the gates of the Cellular Jail in Port Blair, where the story of India’s freedom struggle is told in stone corridors and an evening sound-and-light show. Geology gets its turn with Barren Island, often described as South Asia’s only active volcano, a rumbling cone you see from a boat rather than set foot on.

We also look back at how island tourism adjusted after the pandemic, with new rules, new habits and a few changes that are probably here to stay. And we close with a long read on scuba diving, because the Andamans are, for many of us, the place we first breathed underwater.

Travelling lightly

If there is one thread running through this issue, it is the idea of travelling lightly. These are small islands with fragile reefs, limited fresh water and communities that did not ask to become destinations. That does not mean you should stay away. It means choosing operators who follow reef-safe practices, carrying a refillable bottle, leaving shells and coral where they lie, and remembering that the forest beyond the road belongs to someone.

It also means slowing down. The temptation in the Andamans is to tick off islands the way one ticks off monuments in a city. Our advice is the opposite. Pick two bases, give each of them real time, and let one day in three be empty. The best moments we have had on these islands were unplanned: a ferry delayed long enough to watch dolphins off the bow, a fisherman explaining the tides on a beach at Neil, a plate of fried fish eaten with our feet in the sand while the sky turned orange.

What we hope you take home

We hope you come back with more than a tan. Ask your boat captain about the reef he fished as a boy. Try the local curries in a simple Port Blair eatery rather than only the resort buffet. Spend an hour in the Anthropological Museum or the Samudrika naval marine museum before you head out to the beaches, so that what you see later has context. Watch the sun come up at least once. And if you are lucky enough to dive or snorkel, notice how much life a single coral head can hold, and how easily it could be lost. That small act of noticing is, we think, the beginning of caring for a place.

A note on facts and changes

Island travel changes quickly. Ferry schedules shift with the weather and the season, permit rules are revised, and some places have been renamed in recent years. Havelock is now officially Swaraj Dweep, Neil is Shaheed Dweep and Ross Island is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, though you will still hear the old names everywhere. We have checked what we can, but please confirm timings, permits and prices with official sources and your operator before you travel. Where we are not certain, we have said so.

Thank you

This issue, like every issue, is made by a small team and a generous community of readers who send us corrections, tips and the occasional photograph that makes us jealous. Thank you for travelling with us through another year. If you go to the islands this season, write and tell us what you found, especially the quiet places we have not yet discovered.

Here is to a year of slower journeys, kinder footprints and seas that stay this blue.

Warmly,

Khushi Anand, Editor