Most Andaman visitors never leave Port Blair long enough

IndiGo and Air India both route through Chennai or Kolkata; you land at Veer Savarkar Airport by early afternoon if you leave Mumbai or Ahmedabad at dawn. The drive to the hotel takes fifteen minutes. Drop your bags and go directly to Corbyn's Cove — a short crescent of sand five minutes from town, good for nothing except washing the flight off your legs and eating a fried fish plate from the shacks on the road. Then the Cellular Jail, where three of the original seven wings survive. Savarkar's cell is on the third tier; the gallows are in the courtyard; neither is dramatised, which is why they work. The 5.45 pm light-and-sound show runs in the same courtyard, narrated around the old peepal tree. It is in Hindi, it is slow in the middle, and it is still worth every minute. Book the show ticket at the gate in the morning if you can — they go.

Dinner is a Bengali vegetarian thali near Aberdeen Bazaar, or grilled red snapper at a seafood place on the same street. The islands were settled largely from Bengal, so the everyday cooking is Bengali — cholar dal, aloo posto, rice — and it is reliably good. The pure-veg South Indian places open early for breakfast tomorrow.

A harbour boat leaves Phoenix Jetty for Ross Island — officially Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep — at nine in the morning. The British made this their administrative capital and abandoned it after the 1941 earthquake; the banyan roots have since pulled the church walls apart and grown down through the ballroom floor. Spotted deer and peacocks walk the paths between the ruins as if they were always meant to be there. Give it ninety minutes. North Bay is the next stop, a fifteen-minute ride across the harbour, where a glass-bottom boat runs over the coral shelf and you can try sea walking — a weighted helmet, a pipe to the surface, a guide who holds your elbow. The coral is not the Andaman's best, but it is good enough for anyone who has not snorkelled before to understand what the fuss is about.

The afternoon belongs to the Samudrika Naval Marine Museum in Haddo, where five galleries cover Andaman marine life, the island chain and the indigenous communities. The taxi back takes ten minutes. This is also the afternoon to confirm tomorrow's Makruzz or Nautika catamaran — check the printed ticket against the time, because the 6 am sailing and the 8 am sailing both fill up and late arrivals are not accommodated. Have dinner early and pack the snorkelling kit on top.

The catamaran takes about ninety minutes from Phoenix Jetty to Havelock, now Swaraj Dweep. The ride is smooth in season and choppy in the inter-monsoon weeks; sit on the upper deck if the sea is flat, inside if it is not. Check in at the hotel, leave the bags and take the ten-minute auto to Radhanagar — Beach No. 7 — by three in the afternoon. Two kilometres of white sand backed by mahua forest, no construction, a lifeguard flag system, and a strong undertow past the red flags. Walk the whole beach once to find where the shade falls at five, then stay for the sunset from the northern end. The light goes orange behind the treeline and the water turns the colour of copper. This is the one moment on the trip that the photographs never quite get right.

Dinner is at the beach village near the hotel — Havelock has a small strip with grilled fish, coconut prawn curry and cold Kingfisher, all at prices that feel almost apologetic. Tuna landed that morning, cooked in ten minutes, eaten under a fan. Do not skip this in favour of the hotel restaurant on the first night.

A speedboat from Havelock jetty covers the twenty minutes to Elephant Beach. The coral shelf here starts in waist-deep water — fringing reef close enough for anyone to see without a certification or any confidence in the water. Snorkelling gear and a guide come with the boat; the guide points out parrotfish, clownfish and the occasional sea turtle. The beach itself is a small cove; arrive before ten and you have it almost to yourself. If you want to go further down, a discover-scuba dive runs from the certified operators at the jetty for around ₹4,500. One instructor, one diver, eight metres down. No certification needed and the water is warm enough that you will not want to come up.

Kalapathar is on the east coast, twenty minutes by auto from the main village. A strip of black volcanic rock against turquoise water, best in the early light but quiet by four in the afternoon. Sit here for an hour with something cold from the shack at the road and watch the colour change in the water as the sun drops. This evening is the right time for a slow dinner at the hotel — you have an early ferry tomorrow.

A forty-minute catamaran south brings you to Neil Island, now Shaheed Dweep — eighteen square kilometres of paddy and banana plantation with three beaches and almost no traffic. Bharatpur beach is beside the jetty: calm, glass-clear water, a glass-bottom boat over the coral, good for an hour after check-in. The Natural Bridge is a coral arch the sea has cut out of the rock on the island's north-west edge, reachable only at low tide along a path that runs across the reef. Your guide checks the tide table before breakfast and the visit is timed around it; there is no way around the tide and no shortcut to the arch. It takes twenty minutes each way on the reef path and the arch itself is about eight metres across.

Laxmanpur beach is where the sun sets on Neil, a wider stretch of sand on the western coast with shallow water and the kind of quiet that feels different from Havelock's quiet — less resort, more village. Walk it in the last hour of light. Dinner is from the small restaurants near the jetty: fish curry, rice, a lime soda, nothing complicated.

The ferry from Neil to Port Blair takes about two hours. If your flight is in the evening — which most connections through Chennai or Kolkata require — you have four hours in Port Blair. Use them at Chidiya Tapu, the bird sanctuary at the island's southern tip: a mangrove boardwalk, a viewpoint over the Andaman Sea, and the sight of brahminy kites riding the thermals off the cliffs. The Anthropological Museum in Haddo is worth an hour if Chidiya Tapu is too far for your timeline. Airport drop three hours before departure; Port Blair check-in is slow and the security queue at peak season is longer than it looks. The flight almost always routes through the mainland, so clear customs at your connecting city if you have bought anything with organic material — declared, with a receipt.

What to carry home: the Andamans have a sensible rule against removing coral, shells and sea life. The markets at Aberdeen Bazaar sell pearl jewellery, painted coconut shells and nicobari mats, none of which attract customs attention. The red-snapper pickle from the small shops near the jetty travels well and is the one food memory that survives the flight.