“Long Island Andaman is a small island”, I thought to myself. I had come across it while looking for places beyond the usual Port Blair, Neil and Havelock in the Andaman Islands. I wanted to experience something different and so during my quest of experiencing the North and Middle Andaman district, after spending a week in Diglipur and almost another week in Mayabunder, I thought I’d had enough and would touch Long Island for a day or two and make my way back to Havelock. But I was way in over my head when I booked my return ticket before even arriving in Long Island Andaman. Because I had no ..read more

Diglipur is a town located in the North Andaman Island of the north and Middle Andaman district. Though the town in itself doesn’t have a lot of tourism potential, the villages and beaches around the area is what we’ll be covering in this Diglipur travel guide. Diglipur has a mixed population of Bengali, Malayali, Tamil and Telugu people and Hindi is widely spoken and understood everywhere here. My visit to Diglipur was planned rather spontaneously and came to fruition at the very last minute. I had been in Port Blair for 8 days waiting for the cyclone to clear so the ferries heading to Hut Ba ..read more

I went to Neil Island on a whim. My initial plan was to actually take a ferry to go to Hut Bay in Little Andaman and explore this truly offbeat haven of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. But after spending three days in Port Blair, waiting for the rain to stop and the ferry schedule to come out, I decided I’d go explore some other, easily accessible part of the archipelago before I come back for my Little Andaman adventure. With almost no idea of a Neil Island travel guide, I showed up at the DSS Office for a ticket – extremely underprepared. Locals who were standing in the line with me helped ..read more

I reach Long Island on a whim. After spending four days in Mayabunder, visiting the villages of Karmatang and Webi, I decide I want to hop on a bus now – and I do. No one truly knows the exact timetable of the buses. And deciding to leave on a Sunday does not help my case – apparently, buses on Sunday are fewer than on other days. So I pack my bags and sit at the side of the road for almost 45 minutes with my host until the right bus finally appears. A hurried goodbye later, I am seated in a local bus with all eyes on me – an evident outsider, a solo woman, a backpack on my back. But people ha ..read more

My stint with the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has gone way beyond just a Port Blair itinerary for 3 days. Waiting for permits and ferry schedules made my Port Blair trip plan much longer than I could’ve anticipated in my dreams. The permits and ferry here is a whole other scene, something which I will delve into deeper, in dedicated posts on a travel guide for the Andaman Islands and figuring out the ferry bookings and schedule in the Andaman Islands. But for now, having spent all of two weeks in Port Blair itself, I would like to call myself some kind of a Port Blair conno ..read more