An amazing adventure - II

Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, is a small, beautiful and neat town. Hindi is the most commonly spoken language, followed by Bengali and Tamil. The town looks somewhat like this -
Our resort (the Fortune Bay Island resort) had a fantastic view of the bay and North Island.
Port Blair does have basic infrastructure (unlike Havelock, but more on that later) - you do get a cellphone signal sometimes, and typically get yesterday's newspaper.

Post Blair was only our base station. From there, we visited a multitude of different islands. Viper island was the first - it was somewhat macabre, since all it contained were a prison house and a gallows, and especially since it had been devastated completely by the tsunami and had been abandoned since!!

The next island we went to was North Bay. The island is known for its beach where one can snorkel. We took a glass bottomed boat and saw some corals (which were mostly dead, alas!). However, we took off into the forest and were rewarded for our efforts when we came to this massive lighthouse (the same as seen behind the twenty rupee note!). After a rough and tough climb to the top of the lighthouse, we were rewarded with a massively cold and strong breeze, and a view to die for!! Check out the misty mountains in the distance.


Our next stop was at Ross Island. This island is only a small distance away from Port Blair, and was the erstwhile colony of the British army. It was known as the Paris of the East, so beautiful was it. Even now, ruins of the Brit settlement can be seen. The island is currently owned and run by the Indian navy, and has deer and peacocks, in addition to a beautiful melancholy abandoned beach and lonely World War II Japanese bunkers!!

Next came Baratang Island. To reach this distant place, we had to pass through a tribal reserved forest (no pictures are permitted, so we dont have any, though we did manage to see a lot of tribals). The tribals are totally naked, except colorful belts of beads, and are seen with bows and arrows. They looked totally African, with flat noses, very dark complexions and curly hair!

Baratang island is in the middle of a mangrove swamp. The boat ride to the limestone caves was awesome, through dense and thick mangroves!!
The entrance to the limestone cave came after a trek through dense forest which came after the mangroves. Though the cave itself was pitch dark (so no photos!!), we could see massive stalactites and stalagmites being formed before our very eyes.

We encountered some wild fauna en route (check out this sleeping bat from close quarters and this multicolored reptile!!)

After returning from the mangroves, we trudged further uphill on Baratang to view this mud volcano. Though we could see the bubbling mud oozing out, I must confess the damn thing was a bit underwhelming. Somehow when I think volcano I think of huge craters and large seething masses of lava. This was unique, but distinctly timid :-)

More to go in part III...