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Stumped by the cerulean sea

Words are grossly inadequate to describe the awe the Andamans inspire

PHOTOS: K. PICHUMANI

PRISTINE STRETCH The beach is breathtakingly beautiful and sometimes exclamations don't have the punch and adjectives no poetry

Sometimes, exclamations don't have the punch and adjectives have no poetry. Sometimes you just stand there, eyes and mouth wide open. It's not the most intelligent expression, but there are times when Nature has a way of leaving you seriously stumped.

And so there I stood staring at this beach that lay between a beautiful copper sulphate sea and a shady grove of tall solemn trees. That beach No. 7 should be the seventh place that the "settlers" discovered on Havelock must be the most poetic coincidence ever. Suddenly it was easy to believe in the number seven.

Even the jellyfish sting was forgiven. Now, how do you grudge a being that's translucent and has in its gossamer skeleton a little jealous sting? After all, I had spent the last hour staring at the blue of the sea (and what a blue it was!) and the brilliant white of the beach sand (and what a beach it was!), quite ignoring that lone jellyfish.

Missing the dolphins

Earlier that morning, though, I had missed the dolphins, which had playfully chased our ship.

In the Andamans, there is so much to see that if you aren't out there, with or without sunscreen, there's a lot you will miss. I get one point for the white bellied sea eagle I spotted (of course, one more for the jellyfish, though I lose one for the dolphins), three points for the starfish, one for the spiny sea urchin, a few for the wild orchids, 32 for the parrot fish, 58 for the clown fish and few hundreds for the little silver things recklessly swimming. And if you are snorkelling for the first time, like me, it's a little overwhelming. A few gasps later, you get used to blowing out water from the snorkel.

Elephant Point at Havelock is a great place to start, particularly if you are in the safe company of Rustam (King of Havelock as his friends tease him) and his boys from the Tourism Department.

Swimming elephants

Elephant Point wasn't always Elephant Point, not until agency Fallon McElligott hired Tarsem Singh to photograph an elephant swimming up to the raft and exchange his four peanuts for the sunbathing babe's bottle of Coke.

The trivia matters, because the ad is legendary now. According to Rustam, even today, 12 years after the ad, there's always that oddball who unlike the dazed with sun and quiet and other good things backpackers or the amateur snorkellers, who's there to see the swimming elephants.

After two heavenly Havelock days, I was off on the Andamans Trunk Road. While I was busy staring at the gorgeous teak and padauk and my favourite garajan trees, there on the roadside stood the Jarawas, their naked African skin covered partially in blood red bits of cloth provided by the Tribal Welfare Ministry and their own beetle flower jewellery. Straight out of National Geographic!

I reached Turtle Resort at Diglipur a little weary. But the spectacle at Ross and Smith was not to be missed. You make that pilgrimage to walk alone on a beach that joins Ross and Smith twice a day.

At high tide, Ross and Smith are two islands and your friendly boatman will be forced to get you back home. The other pilgrimage is, of course, the Cellular Jail. With due respect to its historic importance, Cellular Jail lets remember was just that — a jail.

Just another fact

So when a respectable citizen of the islands traced his ancestry back to a murderer, he was just stating facts. (Someone told me the tougher criminal contributed by doing extra time for the freedom fighters.) In fact, the islanders, unlike us mainlanders, aren't seeking lost identity in mother tongue and ancestral origin.

Sure, there's a Keralapur and you can identify every Bengali household from the hibiscus plant at the entrance, but when my friend from the Tourism Department, Nagur, boasting about how truly secular the people of the Andamans are, it was more than a mere coincidence that he was flanked by a Muslim and a Christian both nodding vigorously.

Meera Mohanty

TRAVEL TIPS

The Tourism Department got there first. So you can count on it to have the best views. The other blessing is the courteous staff. There are the Barefoot Resort's well-designed cottages that come with open-air bathrooms and wooden ceiling fans, and the ITC Welcom Group's Fortune Resort Bay Island. At Andamans camping out is a great option if you get the permits.

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