And Da Manz

After paying my respects to Mother Theresa and getting my barnet cut I headed for Kolkata´s NSBIA Airport.

Two hours over the Bay of Bengal (and technically closer to Burma/Indonesia) I found myself on the Andamans - hundreds of Islands inhabited by a mix of South and Southeast Asian settlers as well as Tribal bods (none of which I had the pleasure of meeting).

Life here was a massive contrast to the chaotic mainland and hanging out on the islands required "taking it down a couple of notches" (...so much so that it wasn´t uncommon to wait a couple of hours for your grub).

Of the hundreds of Islands I managed 4...

...Worth mentioning was Havelock, popular with Honeymooners and famed for its Beach Number 7 (... probably the nicest beach I ever did see)

Neil Island, which was less popular but still very beautiful (and much more humble) had excellent diving / snorkeling sites and was so small you could cycle from one end to the other in under an hour.

... And my personal favorite... Little Andaman (...which despite its name) was the largest of the islands and probably inhabited by the least (but friendliest villagers I´ve ever met).

Little Andaman had almost no tourist infrastructure and a real feeling of isolation... stretches of beaches would be deserted as far as the eye could see and there were no more than 20 tourists on the island at any given time. 

My time here was spent surfing (badly)... with the added exhilaration of sharing the water with Sharks, man eating Crocs and poisonous sea snakes...

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When I wasn´t being an all round bad-ass I would often take sunset walks whilst listening to Chris Rea and 10cc.

Pictures