An amazing adventure - III

Our next mission was to get to the top of Mount Harriet. This was the highest peak in the South Andamans, and also the British summer capital (the Brits certainly knew how to live life!!). We trekked a bit of the distance and were rewarded with a cool wide vista and a cool breeze. We discovered a 16km trekking path through wild jungle at the top, but did not go because we did not have footwear which would protect us from leeches..


After exploring all these interesting places from Port Blair, we set off for Havelock island with great excitement. After a three hour boat ride, we arrived at Havelock. We were quite excited to be there, what with Time magazine naming Beach no. 7 on Havelock as the best beach in Asia and one of the best in the world (though I am quite puzzled at how something so subjective can be ranked...).
Havelock was a real revelation!! Half the island was still uninhabited (unexplored dense jungle). No cell phone signal, no cable tv, no newspaper, no STD phones!! One dirt track (the highway!!), about 200 population, and massive beauty all around.. check out some of the landscapes there. We would usually wake up at five am to catch the sunrise (and mostly missed!!) and would be in bed by eight cos it would be pitch dark by six!!

We rented a couple of bicycles on this idyllic island, and would set off for Beach no. 7 which was 13 km away from our pretty resort!! Believe me, it was not easy (the pictures say it all :-))

Finally I come to the icing on the cake - our scuba dive into a live coral reef. It was scary and majestic at the same time. We were underwater for 63 minutes straight, and I have never been so determined to keep breathing in my life!! My ears hurt, my nose were blocked and my mouth was totally dry from the dry air pumping from the oxygen tank, and yet I was mesmerised by so many different fluoroscent fishes, snakes, corals and plants!! We went down to a depth of 12 meters (which does not seem so much on paper, but is actually damn scary if you happen to look up!!) and thankfully we were able to overcome our fears and panic (the guide later remarked that it was one of the smoothest rookie dives that he had ever undertaken!). My only regret is that all the wonderous stuff I saw at the bottom of the ocean will remain only in my memories...

After two nights in Havelock we returned to Port Blair. The return ship ride was quite rough (a storm brewing and a choppy sea tossing our ship about as if it were made of paper!!). We were quite grateful to get back to land safely, and our enthusiasm for the sea was severly tempered :-) A couple of stiff drinks helped restore nerves, and yet after this we did not venture back to the sea for the duration of our holiday...
As I revisit my bland narrative I find there is so much I have missed - the shells we collected, the elephants we encountered, the ghost house we lived in, the nice time we had solving very hard sudoku puzzles over neat whiskey, the strange ship with underwater first class... there is enough in my memory to populate many posts. Yet that will have to wait for some other time.