Port Blair, Andaman Islands

The Andaman Islands are a territory of India along with the Nicobar Islands. Originally this was a penal colony.

I’m not too sure what to say about this port except that it was quite undesirable; hot, humid, dirty, smelly… pretty bad all the way around. One woman commented that she hadn’t seen anywhere with so much trash except Egypt - from what I saw she was right. We had planned to take a tuktuk and do a short tour of the area and a visit to the bazaar but we talked to a number of people who were returning to the ship and decided to skip it. There was no bazaar or local market like we like to visit - people said there was a street with some shops. There didn’t seem to be any local handcrafts, what they were selling were mass-produced items (probably from China). There are supposed to be some nice resorts here, but they must be located some distance from Port Blair.

It should have been a clue when the Captain was talking the previous evening in his regular announcement - he said we will dock at about 10:00 and expect to have clearance by 10:30 and you can go ashore… and at 11:00 you’ll be back onboard. He wasn’t kidding.

Now we are on a four sea-day stretch before Mumbai.