Andaman Islands travel guide

Travel to Andaman Islands between Dec – Apr. Those are the months the weather, the crowds and the airfare line up — outside them you trade one of the three.

Currency

Indian Rupee (INR)

Language

Hindi and Bengali are the working languages — most settlers came from Bengal and East Pakistan — with Tamil and Telugu common too. Hindi and English both work everywhere in the tourist trade.

Time zone

IST (UTC+5:30)

Plug type

Type C / D / M

Flight time from India

5.5 hrs

Flying from

Chennai · Kolkata · Delhi · Bengaluru · Hyderabad · Visakhapatnam

• 

  Radhanagar at five in the evening

  Two kilometres of white sand with a treeline behind it and no construction at all, because the beach is protected. Sunset is the event and the light is worth the wait. There is no shade at midday and no shacks selling anything, so carry your own water.

• 

  Snorkelling at Elephant Beach

  Reached by a twenty-minute boat from Havelock jetty or a muddy forty-minute walk through the forest. The coral starts about fifteen metres out in chest-deep water. Use a licensed operator whose guide gets into the water with you — the current here sets outward.

• 

  Scuba at Havelock or Neil

  A discover-scuba dive — no certification, one instructor to one diver — is about ₹4,500 and takes a complete non-swimmer down to eight or ten metres. A PADI Open Water course is four days and roughly ₹28,000–32,000. Nemo Reef, The Aquarium and The Wall are the sites people come back for.

• The Cellular Jail and its evening show

  The Kala Pani jail held Savarkar and hundreds of Indian revolutionaries in single cells designed so no prisoner could see another. Do the daytime visit and then the six o'clock light-and-sound show, which runs in Hindi and English on alternating evenings — check which one you are booking.

• Sunrise at Sitapur, Neil Island

  Neil has three beaches and each does one thing: Bharatpur for the glass-bottom boats, Laxmanpur for the natural coral bridge at low tide, and Sitapur for the sunrise. The whole island is 18 square kilometres — hire a scooter or take one of the shared jeeps and you have seen it in a day.

• Baratang, once

  A long day from Port Blair: a two-and-a-half-hour road convoy through the Jarawa tribal reserve, then a mangrove creek boat to the limestone caves and the mud volcano. It is worth doing once. Inside the reserve, stopping, photographing or offering anything to the Jarawa is a criminal offence.

• Bengali vegetarian thaliVegetarian

  The islands were settled largely from Bengal, so the everyday veg food is Bengali — aloo posto, begun bhaja, cholar dal, rice. It is the most reliable vegetarian meal on the islands and you will find it in Aberdeen Bazaar in Port Blair and on the Havelock main road.

• Grilled fish and coconut prawn curryVegetarian

  What the islands are actually famous for — red snapper, barracuda and tuna landed the same morning, and prawns cooked in coconut milk. Said plainly so nobody is surprised: almost every kitchen here is a seafood kitchen first, and a vegetarian one second, if at all.

• Pure-veg South Indian at Port BlairVegetarian

  Port Blair has a handful of genuinely pure-vegetarian places doing idli, dosa and a South Indian thali, and a Gujarati-run kitchen or two that come and go with the season. Havelock and Neil have three or four between them, so book a hotel that will cook vegetarian rather than relying on finding it.

• Coconut water and island fruitVegetarian

  Tender coconut at ₹40 on every corner, plus papaya, pineapple and the local banana. This is genuinely how a lot of vegetarian visitors get through the middle of the day on Havelock, and it is no bad thing.

• What to carry from homeJain friendly

  There is no Jain restaurant anywhere in the Andamans, and everything on the islands arrives by ship, so choice is thin and prices are high. Gujarati groups routinely carry thepla, khakhra, dry farsan and ready-to-eat packets — do the same, especially for the ferry days, when you may be at sea through a mealtime.

Set a meal preference — vegetarian, Jain or halal — when you book and we brief every hotel and restaurant on your itinerary.

• Coconut oil, virgin coconut products and island honey from the government Sagarika emporium
• Cane and bamboo baskets, and Nicobari mats, bought through the co-operative rather than a beach stall
• Pearl and mother-of-pearl jewellery, from a shop that can show you its source paperwork
• Wooden craft in padauk and gurjan, which are locally regulated timbers — ask for the receipt
• Andaman spices — clove, cinnamon, nutmeg — grown on the islands themselves
• What NOT to buy: turtle shell, giant clam, sea fan and coral in any form are illegal under the Wildlife Protection Act, and carrying them is an offence at the airport

Veer Savarkar International Airport at Port Blair (IXZ) is the only way in, with direct flights from Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Bengaluru; from Ahmedabad and Mumbai it is one stop and most of a day. Between the islands it is the private catamarans, booked online weeks ahead, or the cheaper and slower government ferries, which are hard to book from outside the islands. On Havelock and Neil, autos and rented scooters. Mobile data now runs on the Chennai submarine cable and is far better than it was, but still drops on Neil and vanishes entirely on a crossing.

• Ferries cancel for weather, particularly between May and September, and the queue for the next sailing is long. Keep a full buffer day in Port Blair before your flight home rather than trusting the morning boat.
• Indian citizens need no permit for Port Blair, Havelock, Neil or Baratang. Foreign nationals need a Restricted Area Permit, issued on arrival. Nicobar is closed to tourists entirely, and North Sentinel is prohibited to everyone.
• On the Andaman Trunk Road through the Jarawa reserve, photographing, filming, stopping or offering food to the Jarawa is a criminal offence prosecuted under the tribal protection regulation. Convoys are timed and escorted for that reason.
• Coral cuts infect fast in the tropics, and the shallow reefs carry stonefish and lionfish. Wear reef shoes, never stand on coral, and do not touch anything, however still it is.
• Medical evacuation from Havelock or Neil means a boat to Port Blair, and anything serious means a flight to Chennai. Take travel insurance that explicitly covers scuba diving, and carry cash — ATMs outside Port Blair are unreliable and UPI drops with the network.

Per person, per day, on the ground — meals, local transport and entry tickets. Flights and hotels sit in the package price, not here.