The agenda for Day 2 of our trip to the beautiful Andaman Islands was basically heading from Port Blair to Havelock. Havelock is one of the largest islands in the Andamans and has now been renamed as Swaraj Dweep. It is the most popular destination in the Andamans for tourists. The only way to travel to Havelock Island is via ferry. There are Government ferries and Private ferries that run from Port Blair to the jetty in Havelock. Given the duration and standard of the Government ferries, all reference guided us to choosing a private one (which are air-conditioned and much faster) especially considering we were travelling with young children. We opted for a ferry run by Makruzz (tickets for which can be booked here). Tickets cost us around Rs 1400 per person (child ticket is same price) each way. They run only two ferries a day and you have to be at the Jetty an hour in advance so scheduling becomes important when travelling around the islands.
The second day in Andaman was much more humid with a quick rainshower in between that left us all scampering for cover. We had some time in the morning prior to our ferry so spent a couple hours exploring an area near our hotel which is known as the Netaji Flag Hoisting Memorial. This is the same spot where the Indian tricolour was first ever hoisted. It was on December 30th 1943 when Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose visited Andaman to take over political control from the Japanese. The actual control was retained by the Japanese till 1945.
.After a fairly comfortable ferry ride we reached Havelock and checked into our home for the next 3 nights – Coral Reef Resort. The 4 star resort is situated on Vijay Nagar beach and the reasons we opted for this place were that it ticked all the boxes for our priorities –
- Child friendly
- Swimming pool
- Easy access to beach
We were overall pretty happy with our decision and for most parts it met up to our expectations
So how did we spend our time in Havelock? Stay tuned for the next installment in my Andaman Diary.