It’s the middle of the day and we’re on Beach Number Seven, better known as Radhanagar Beach, on Havelock Island in the Andamans. The sky is blue, the sea, a shimmering aquamarine and the silence on the beach, blissful. The sea is the only energetic creature around, sending excitingly high waves crashing on the beach. As for me, I’m lying flat in the shade, staring at an impossibly green gecko that has emerged from the rainforests behind me. Beside me, the husband is fast asleep, open book resting comfortably over his face. “Let’s go for a walk!” the children shout. I pretend not to hear them. They amiably go back to building sand castles, exclaiming as scores of flying fish give aerial performances in the distance. As beach experiences go, this is possibly as idyllic as it gets.
“This has been rated as one of Asia’s best beaches,” says Mahesh, who sells coconuts to us at extortionate prices just outside the beach. “Sadly, not that many people know of it just yet…” Around us, auto drivers exhort us to see the village of Havelock on their smelly steeds. The detritus of tourism — chips packets and empty tetrapacks — lie outside an overflowing bin. When a busload of Bengali tourists stops for tea and pakodas by the roadside, I wonder what would happen if more people ‘discovered’ the Andamans. Anyway, since we’re here, we buy coconuts at the same price we would have paid in Delhi, though the place is surrounded by forests of the stuff. Then we thankfully return to the refuge of the still-pristine beach for that long overdue walk.
From the entrance to the beach, if you walk on and on towards its northern edge, you’ll eventually reach a magical cove that the locals refer to as the fish nursery. Here, in shallow pools of sun-warmed water uncovered by the ebbing tide, fish spawn. We carefully hop from rock to rock so as not to disturb the eggs and are rewarded by the sight of some freshly hatched, thumbnail-sized clownfish. “Why is it that locals here don’t appreciate the natural beauty of their island as we do?” asks my son as we take picture after picture of the newborns. I just don’t know…
Freshly hatched clown fish
The air reverberates with the sound of their engines, the air suddenly tainted by the motorboat fumes. Somehow, these, as well as the rainbow hues of oil spill on the water surface, seem more out of place here, than they seem in the city. “Can’t you use row boats?” I ask naively. “Not to go as far as we need to for the right fish,” retorts a fisherman. One of them, Raju, stops to chat. “Life isn’t easy for us, you know,” says he. “Havelock isn’t that developed, so we have to travel far to sell our fish. I understand what you say, motorboats aren’t good for the sea. But we need to fill our stomach too.” He opens a pouch full of rare shells and coral he’s collected. “Would you like to buy some?” he asks, “You can even make jewellery from the coral.” Knowing that it’s illegal to pluck coral or sell some of the shells he’s touting to us, the children are shocked. He amiably puts away his contraband and starts telling us fishing lore. “My father was illiterate, and said that the only ‘book’ he could read was the sea,” he says. “Dark, rippling patches in water would make him predict a good catch of mackerel. And whenever he saw prawns and fish jumping in the water, he’d spread out his largest fishing nets, for this usually indicated that a big predator was out hunting. To escape it, smaller fish would swim to the water’s surface only to be netted by him.”
Fish nursery on Radhanagar Beach
Soon, too soon, it’s time to leave. As we board the ferry, a shoal of flying fish rises high above the water in a final salute. Then the ferry pulls out of the dock, and takes us back to reality.
HOW TO REACH
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Air India, Jet Airways, Spicejet and GoAir run daily direct daily flights to Port Blair from Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai
- From Port Blair, ferries operate daily services to Havelock Island (the best one is the air-conditioned Catamaran ). Pawan Hans operates seaplane flights to Havelock from Port Blair four days a week