An amazing adventure - I

First, a trivia question - what do you see on the back of a twenty rupee note?
Answer - this (Check it now!!) Second trivia question - what place is this??
(Easy to guess) answer - North bay, South Andaman islands

Before you go on reading this blogpost, a quick warning. I'm just back from an amazing adventure in the Andamans, and I may suffer from an overdose of enthusiasm as I describe all there is to experience there. Please bear with me!! The second warning is that words may not be able to describe the sheer beauty of the place, therefore I will depend a lot on photographs (this could make it tough to load this page)

The Andaman islands offer a smorgasbord of different ecosystems - emerald blue sea, dense rainforest, mangroves, high altitude mountains, and of course the best beaches in the world. We were lucky to visit in the lean tourist season, so we had the whole place to ourselves! We had planned the trip as an adventure trip, and we surely had quite a few - scuba diving in a live and impossibly colorful coral reef, trekking through dense forest, going deep into a dark limestone cave, seeing a bubbling mud volcano, and cycling, cycling and more cycling!!

First, the origin - the Andaman islands apparently got their name from Handuman (or Hanuman, son of the wind). This is because in the Ramayan, Ram's army of apes had initally planned to launch an attack on Ravan's Lanka from these islands (though it seems to be quite surprising, given that these islands are quite a distance away from the mainland - it takes the same time to get to the Andamans from Chennai by air as it takes to get from Delhi to Chennai!). Hanuman had come to these islands to do a recce, and wisely decided against it!! The islands have been inhabited by aboriginal tribes (a few of which are cannibals!!) since time immemorial, and only when the British decided to set up a penal outpost (sometime at the end of the nineteenth century) here did these islands see civilization. These islands came to be known an 'kaala paani' or 'black water' ever since the dreaded Cellular jail was built to lock up political prisoners.
We travelled a lot by a small boat between these islands, and though the waters are usually friendly and emerald green, they do suddenly become very scary, black and opaque whenever its cloudy!! More recently, the islands were severely affected by a tsunami, and even a eighteen months later, the effects are there to see - uprooted massive trees, waterlogged shops and destroyed flora, ships etc.
But now for the good stuff. To be continued in part II...