WARNING: Looooooooooong post ahead.
John and I had always hoped to do something big to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Well, we did something big. We moved to India. Woot!
Moving the whole family clear across the world isn't really what we had in mind, though. What we did have in mind was relaxing in a tropical paradise, just the two of us, to celebrate 10 years together. Dream on, right? Wrong! We finally got our 10-year anniversary celebrated just as we had imagined, even though it was a year and four months late.
Way back in language training, John and one of his classmates agreed to do a babysitting swap once we were at post. We watched their two kids for a few days while they went to Nepal, and they watched our three kids for a few days while we went to the Andaman Islands (and here).
I had never heard of the Andamans until we moved to India, but they're apparently well-known to serious scuba divers. We met several European divers and one couple who came all the way from South Dakota to dive near the reefs and in the open ocean around the islands.
Tourism is still a new thing in the Andamans, and you can see that the locals are struggling to balance the costs and benefits. Lucky for us, the islands are remote enough to attract smaller numbers than you might find in the Caribbean or in the Maldives. Also lucky for us, they're a short, direct flight from Chennai.
Here's the tiny airport in Port Blair, capital of the Andamans. This is really about all there is to it. Since the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are protected territory within India, we as foreigners had to have special permits to enter. We got a separate stamp in our passports, even though we never left the country.
We went straight from the airport to a ferry that took us from the big island to Havelock Island, where we stayed at the Barefoot resort. The ferry was all decked out for Diwali ... with Christmas decorations ...
On arrival we had to check in with tourism officials (because we're foreigners). Their office was in this thatched hut.
After a winding drive through villages and jungle, we arrived at our resort on Havelock's Beach No. 7, which was rated best beach in Asia and one of the best in the world by various raters of such things. I don't know how one rates a beach, but it's for sure the most amazing beach I've ever seen.
It's huge, for one thing, so even though there were plenty of people around (our resort had been sold out for months) it seemed deserted. White, soft sand, the green jungle running down right to the beach, incredibly clear blue water, shallow water for a long way out ... gorgeous.
Just to remind us that perfection is unattainable, there was the little problem of ... wildlife. There's a healthy population of saltwater crocodiles in the Andamans and, though they usually stick to the mangrove forests, there was an attack off this beach a couple of years ago in which an American tourist was killed. It was so unusual to have an attack in open water off this kind of beach that some people at first didn't believe it was a crocodile, but it was later proved to be so. Here's an article that was published by the Madras Crocodile Bank shortly after the attack.
No one had seen crocodiles in this area before and no one has seen them since, but no one is allowed in the water after sunset or even on the beach at night. There's also an armed policeman patrolling the beach during the day whose sole reason for being there is to watch for crocodiles.
Being me, I have to admit I was a little nervous about the croc situation. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was in elementary school, mostly because Jacques Cousteau was so awesome, but as I got older I realized that I'm a real chicken when it comes to open water. I can't help thinking about sharks or squid or the Portuguese man o' war. Add saltwater crocodiles to the list.
John, on the other hand, believes that there is no danger in the water unless he's going to be diving with a dead and bleeding dolphin strapped to his chest.
The place was so beautiful, though, that I was able to put most of my fears aside and enjoy views like this one along the path from the resort to the beach.
The beach was a short walk through this forest.
We did some exploring on our first day. Most of the beach is smooth sand, but a short walk brought us to views like this.
That's me looking like I'm the only person on earth.
John is generally not content to sit and admire. He must climb and explore instead.
We saw thousands of these cool patterns made by sand crabs.
If you look very closely, you'll see the little artist in this one, just right of center in the upper part of the photo. See it?
Here's the sunset on our first night in Havelock.
The setting sun caused this cool reflection of clouds on the wet beach.
We spent the next day on a full-day snorkeling excursion. We got up early and took the winding road back through the jungle to Beach No. 3, where Barefoot has a diving resort. This resort is the louder, younger, hipper cousin to the more secluded place we stayed. It was full of backpackers staying in A-frame huts and divers from all over the world hoping to see something awesome. Our group (us, a couple from the U.K., a guy from Dubai, and a girl from Sweden) got outfitted in snorkeling gear and headed out on one of the small dive boats. Believe it or not, they had a mask with my prescription (minus 8). Here we are anchored at Beach No. 3.
On the open water ...
Passing one of the many mangrove forests, home to the crocs and to endangered manatees ...
There was no hope of staying dry on the boat. We were soaked with ocean spray before we ever went over the side.
Our first snorkeling spot was South Button Island, which John said looks like the perfect location for a Bond villain's hideout.
It was amazing! We saw all kinds of tropical fish, sea anemones, coral, lots of giant lobsters, schools of tiny silver fish swimming in formation, several lion fish, and -- my favorite -- a banded coral sea snake (which our guide urged us NOT to follow). It was like those National Geographic specials, only in real life.
We left South Button Island and headed to this little beach on Henry Lawrence Island, where we had a picnic lunch and some time to rest. The beach is called Tamarind Camp, because there are tamarind trees all over the place.
I still can't quite believe how beautiful this place was. Here's our boat just off shore.
Lunch was a delicious spread of Indian food. After eating, we relaxed on the beach for a while.
Can you believe these colors?
Then we did some more snorkeling off a reef just off shore. This was a fun spot because we had shallows on one side and a deep drop on the other, so we saw a good variety of sea life. I think my favorite were the giant clams, which were surprisingly colorful.
The 2004 tsunami killed a lot of the coral in the Andamans because it changed sea currents and temperatures. That was sad to see, but there were also some signs of new reef life.
Our guide was very good. He pointed out all kinds of things I'm sure I would have passed without noticing, and he and our spotter were both obviously alert and able to keep us out of harm's way. Our guide (I'm trying to remember his name ... Michael?) is from northeastern India, in the Himalayan foothills, and guides mountain treks during the Andaman off season. He was a really interesting guy.
It took a good two hours to ride back to Havelock from Henry Lawrence Island. We watched the sun begin to set on our way.
I really enjoyed the snorkeling, but even though I was using the mask and tube with no trouble I found I had to raise my head every once in a while to take the tube out and breathe for a bit. It was completely psychological, but there it is. So the next day, John went on a beginners scuba diving trip and I stayed back at the resort to read and relax.
John took this photo before his dive. I'll let him write a post about his new passion, though. He's got some great photos and some video of his dive, and he had a great time. He's made a new goal to get scuba certified so he can do "real" dives off reefs and in open water.
While John was getting up close and personal with clown fish and a giant grouper, I was finishing The Night Circus, writing letters, and snacking on the mini bar's cheese puffs (don't judge me ... I hadn't seen a cheese puff in 18 months) back at the resort. Barefoot is an "eco"-resort, which really means it was fancy camping. Here's our cottage. Cute, isn't it?
John got back for a late lunch, and then we did some hiking around in the jungle right around the resort. The trees were massive.
We followed this path through a bit of forest ...
... and ended up at this tree house on the beach. John climbed it, of course ...
... and jumped a gate to get a few photos like this one.
We spent the next day beach bumming. John would have loved to do more diving, but you aren't supposed to fly within 24 hours of a dive. He's been bitten by the scuba bug, though. I see more beach reading in my future ...
That tiny dot of pink is me standing right under the trees at Beach No. 7. John took the photo from the surf to try to capture the immensity of the jungle.
This is my paparazzi shot of a couple of Indian women on the beach. The only Indian tourists we saw in bathing suits were kids and one or two of the men, though some of the women (like the younger woman in this picture) wore shorts. Most women (like the older woman here) just went right in wearing a full sari. I'll just remind you that a sari is generally 6 yards of fabric. Wouldn't it get heavy? I saw more than one person jumping waves in jeans. Even worse!
We spent our last morning on Havelock walking the beach to Neil's Cove. Those tracks running to John's right are elephant footprints, but we didn't notice them until we were heading back.
You can't see it really well in this picture, but the waves at this part of the cove were forming a wall of water before breaking on the beach.
Here's a better shot of the elephant tracks. They led along the beach and then turned into the forest when they got to the rocky area that separates Beach No. 7 from Neil's Cove.
After our morning walk along the beach, we took another jeep ride through the jungle to the ferry and a ride across to the main island. We stayed a night in Port Blair before catching a morning flight back to Chennai.
After finding our guest house in Port Blair, we headed out to get some dinner and walked right into the town's Durga Puja celebration.
Durga Puja is the most important celebration of the year for Bengalis, who make up a large part of Port Blair's population. As far as I understand it, the festival celebrates goddess Durga's defeat of the demon Mahishasura. Durga is the warrior form of Parvati, wife of Shiva. Follow that? Anyway, it was fun to see the celebration because it's not a big one in the South. In Chennai, Ayudha Puja is the important part of Navratri (the larger festival that includes both Durga Puja and Ayudha Puja, along with some other events). This is getting really confusing, so I'll stop trying to sort out the festivals and just say that we had a lot of fun getting into the sounds and sights.
All the lights and crowds were leading to this idol, which was housed in a huge temporary structure made to look like a temple.
We thought about going inside, but John was wearing shorts, which could be seen as disrespectful, so we just stood outside and watched for a while. Then we walked over to an open air restaurant and had some incredibly tasty tandoori chicken and naan. Here's a better shot of the idol.
We had some time before our flight the next day, so we took a walk around Port Blair. Here's the view from our guest house.
I love these colors ...
We caught an autorickshaw up the hill to the Cellular Jail, which was built by the British to house political prisoners and is now a national memorial. We were there on a public holiday, so the jail was closed, but we walked around the perimeter and were able to see a bit.
There's a garden across the street with statues of famous prisoners, most of them leaders of India's independence movement.
View from the garden ...
John took this last photo as we were boarding our flight back to Chennai. It's someone's back garden gate, which opens right onto the tarmac! We took it as a sign that the Andamans are seriously the boonies. I suppose that's part of what makes it a paradise, though.
It was a dream of a trip, but it was also nice to come home and find the kids alive and well and happy to see us. I wonder what we'll do for our 20th anniversary?
John and I had always hoped to do something big to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Well, we did something big. We moved to India. Woot!
Moving the whole family clear across the world isn't really what we had in mind, though. What we did have in mind was relaxing in a tropical paradise, just the two of us, to celebrate 10 years together. Dream on, right? Wrong! We finally got our 10-year anniversary celebrated just as we had imagined, even though it was a year and four months late.
Way back in language training, John and one of his classmates agreed to do a babysitting swap once we were at post. We watched their two kids for a few days while they went to Nepal, and they watched our three kids for a few days while we went to the Andaman Islands (and here).
I had never heard of the Andamans until we moved to India, but they're apparently well-known to serious scuba divers. We met several European divers and one couple who came all the way from South Dakota to dive near the reefs and in the open ocean around the islands.
Tourism is still a new thing in the Andamans, and you can see that the locals are struggling to balance the costs and benefits. Lucky for us, the islands are remote enough to attract smaller numbers than you might find in the Caribbean or in the Maldives. Also lucky for us, they're a short, direct flight from Chennai.
Here's the tiny airport in Port Blair, capital of the Andamans. This is really about all there is to it. Since the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are protected territory within India, we as foreigners had to have special permits to enter. We got a separate stamp in our passports, even though we never left the country.
We went straight from the airport to a ferry that took us from the big island to Havelock Island, where we stayed at the Barefoot resort. The ferry was all decked out for Diwali ... with Christmas decorations ...
On arrival we had to check in with tourism officials (because we're foreigners). Their office was in this thatched hut.
After a winding drive through villages and jungle, we arrived at our resort on Havelock's Beach No. 7, which was rated best beach in Asia and one of the best in the world by various raters of such things. I don't know how one rates a beach, but it's for sure the most amazing beach I've ever seen.
It's huge, for one thing, so even though there were plenty of people around (our resort had been sold out for months) it seemed deserted. White, soft sand, the green jungle running down right to the beach, incredibly clear blue water, shallow water for a long way out ... gorgeous.
Just to remind us that perfection is unattainable, there was the little problem of ... wildlife. There's a healthy population of saltwater crocodiles in the Andamans and, though they usually stick to the mangrove forests, there was an attack off this beach a couple of years ago in which an American tourist was killed. It was so unusual to have an attack in open water off this kind of beach that some people at first didn't believe it was a crocodile, but it was later proved to be so. Here's an article that was published by the Madras Crocodile Bank shortly after the attack.
No one had seen crocodiles in this area before and no one has seen them since, but no one is allowed in the water after sunset or even on the beach at night. There's also an armed policeman patrolling the beach during the day whose sole reason for being there is to watch for crocodiles.
Being me, I have to admit I was a little nervous about the croc situation. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was in elementary school, mostly because Jacques Cousteau was so awesome, but as I got older I realized that I'm a real chicken when it comes to open water. I can't help thinking about sharks or squid or the Portuguese man o' war. Add saltwater crocodiles to the list.
John, on the other hand, believes that there is no danger in the water unless he's going to be diving with a dead and bleeding dolphin strapped to his chest.
The place was so beautiful, though, that I was able to put most of my fears aside and enjoy views like this one along the path from the resort to the beach.
The beach was a short walk through this forest.
We did some exploring on our first day. Most of the beach is smooth sand, but a short walk brought us to views like this.
That's me looking like I'm the only person on earth.
John is generally not content to sit and admire. He must climb and explore instead.
We saw thousands of these cool patterns made by sand crabs.
If you look very closely, you'll see the little artist in this one, just right of center in the upper part of the photo. See it?
Here's the sunset on our first night in Havelock.
The setting sun caused this cool reflection of clouds on the wet beach.
We spent the next day on a full-day snorkeling excursion. We got up early and took the winding road back through the jungle to Beach No. 3, where Barefoot has a diving resort. This resort is the louder, younger, hipper cousin to the more secluded place we stayed. It was full of backpackers staying in A-frame huts and divers from all over the world hoping to see something awesome. Our group (us, a couple from the U.K., a guy from Dubai, and a girl from Sweden) got outfitted in snorkeling gear and headed out on one of the small dive boats. Believe it or not, they had a mask with my prescription (minus 8). Here we are anchored at Beach No. 3.
On the open water ...
Passing one of the many mangrove forests, home to the crocs and to endangered manatees ...
There was no hope of staying dry on the boat. We were soaked with ocean spray before we ever went over the side.
Our first snorkeling spot was South Button Island, which John said looks like the perfect location for a Bond villain's hideout.
It was amazing! We saw all kinds of tropical fish, sea anemones, coral, lots of giant lobsters, schools of tiny silver fish swimming in formation, several lion fish, and -- my favorite -- a banded coral sea snake (which our guide urged us NOT to follow). It was like those National Geographic specials, only in real life.
We left South Button Island and headed to this little beach on Henry Lawrence Island, where we had a picnic lunch and some time to rest. The beach is called Tamarind Camp, because there are tamarind trees all over the place.
I still can't quite believe how beautiful this place was. Here's our boat just off shore.
Lunch was a delicious spread of Indian food. After eating, we relaxed on the beach for a while.
Can you believe these colors?
Then we did some more snorkeling off a reef just off shore. This was a fun spot because we had shallows on one side and a deep drop on the other, so we saw a good variety of sea life. I think my favorite were the giant clams, which were surprisingly colorful.
The 2004 tsunami killed a lot of the coral in the Andamans because it changed sea currents and temperatures. That was sad to see, but there were also some signs of new reef life.
Our guide was very good. He pointed out all kinds of things I'm sure I would have passed without noticing, and he and our spotter were both obviously alert and able to keep us out of harm's way. Our guide (I'm trying to remember his name ... Michael?) is from northeastern India, in the Himalayan foothills, and guides mountain treks during the Andaman off season. He was a really interesting guy.
It took a good two hours to ride back to Havelock from Henry Lawrence Island. We watched the sun begin to set on our way.
I really enjoyed the snorkeling, but even though I was using the mask and tube with no trouble I found I had to raise my head every once in a while to take the tube out and breathe for a bit. It was completely psychological, but there it is. So the next day, John went on a beginners scuba diving trip and I stayed back at the resort to read and relax.
John took this photo before his dive. I'll let him write a post about his new passion, though. He's got some great photos and some video of his dive, and he had a great time. He's made a new goal to get scuba certified so he can do "real" dives off reefs and in open water.
While John was getting up close and personal with clown fish and a giant grouper, I was finishing The Night Circus, writing letters, and snacking on the mini bar's cheese puffs (don't judge me ... I hadn't seen a cheese puff in 18 months) back at the resort. Barefoot is an "eco"-resort, which really means it was fancy camping. Here's our cottage. Cute, isn't it?
John got back for a late lunch, and then we did some hiking around in the jungle right around the resort. The trees were massive.
We followed this path through a bit of forest ...
... and ended up at this tree house on the beach. John climbed it, of course ...
... and jumped a gate to get a few photos like this one.
We spent the next day beach bumming. John would have loved to do more diving, but you aren't supposed to fly within 24 hours of a dive. He's been bitten by the scuba bug, though. I see more beach reading in my future ...
That tiny dot of pink is me standing right under the trees at Beach No. 7. John took the photo from the surf to try to capture the immensity of the jungle.
This is my paparazzi shot of a couple of Indian women on the beach. The only Indian tourists we saw in bathing suits were kids and one or two of the men, though some of the women (like the younger woman in this picture) wore shorts. Most women (like the older woman here) just went right in wearing a full sari. I'll just remind you that a sari is generally 6 yards of fabric. Wouldn't it get heavy? I saw more than one person jumping waves in jeans. Even worse!
We spent our last morning on Havelock walking the beach to Neil's Cove. Those tracks running to John's right are elephant footprints, but we didn't notice them until we were heading back.
You can't see it really well in this picture, but the waves at this part of the cove were forming a wall of water before breaking on the beach.
Here's a better shot of the elephant tracks. They led along the beach and then turned into the forest when they got to the rocky area that separates Beach No. 7 from Neil's Cove.
After our morning walk along the beach, we took another jeep ride through the jungle to the ferry and a ride across to the main island. We stayed a night in Port Blair before catching a morning flight back to Chennai.
After finding our guest house in Port Blair, we headed out to get some dinner and walked right into the town's Durga Puja celebration.
Durga Puja is the most important celebration of the year for Bengalis, who make up a large part of Port Blair's population. As far as I understand it, the festival celebrates goddess Durga's defeat of the demon Mahishasura. Durga is the warrior form of Parvati, wife of Shiva. Follow that? Anyway, it was fun to see the celebration because it's not a big one in the South. In Chennai, Ayudha Puja is the important part of Navratri (the larger festival that includes both Durga Puja and Ayudha Puja, along with some other events). This is getting really confusing, so I'll stop trying to sort out the festivals and just say that we had a lot of fun getting into the sounds and sights.
All the lights and crowds were leading to this idol, which was housed in a huge temporary structure made to look like a temple.
We thought about going inside, but John was wearing shorts, which could be seen as disrespectful, so we just stood outside and watched for a while. Then we walked over to an open air restaurant and had some incredibly tasty tandoori chicken and naan. Here's a better shot of the idol.
I love these colors ...
We caught an autorickshaw up the hill to the Cellular Jail, which was built by the British to house political prisoners and is now a national memorial. We were there on a public holiday, so the jail was closed, but we walked around the perimeter and were able to see a bit.
There's a garden across the street with statues of famous prisoners, most of them leaders of India's independence movement.
View from the garden ...
It was a dream of a trip, but it was also nice to come home and find the kids alive and well and happy to see us. I wonder what we'll do for our 20th anniversary?
