Port Blair has more to offer than I expected. But the real draw of the Andamans is Havelock Island. Named after the British general who helped stamp out India’s first nationalist rebellion in 1857, the island was officially renamed Swaraj Dweep a few years ago, though few people, even officials, use that name.

Call it what you want, this island has become a diving magnet and Indian honeymoon hot spot, and its beaches are superb. Several ferries a day make the 90-minute run between Port Blair and Havelock, and when I arrived, it was, again, late afternoon. A driver was waiting for us at the jetty and we drove across the island, passing tin-roofed kiosks selling curries and sticks of fragrant incense. Through our open windows we caught the smells of India floating on an island breeze.

At a sign that said “Barefoot at Havelock,” we turned down a bumpy road. Barefoot opened nearly 20 years ago, when there was almost no tourism, and it still maintains a rough-luxe feel with 31 tents, cottages and villas in a rainforest. As soon as we arrived, the resort manager, an extraordinarily kind man named Hari Kalappa, politely asked us to remove our shoes. “We are, literally, barefoot,” he explained.

I was desperate (again) to get to the beach. Hari motioned to a path through the trees. I raced down it, awed by the size and beauty of the great mahua trees around me, trunks 10 feet wide. But when the forest opened up and I arrived at the water’s edge, that’s what stopped me. I was standing on a perfect beach, miles of white sand in either direction, gentle, glassy waves crashing down in pools of white foam.

I’ve traveled to the Maldives, the Seychelles, the Caribbean, Thailand, Bali, the South Pacific and beaches up and down Africa’s coast. But this one, called Radha Nagar, after a Hindu goddess, was more beautiful than any other. I dove in. A few strokes later I was swimming in water above my head but still clear to the bottom — the perfect swimming beach, not too shallow, not too deep.

Perhaps the greatest view was not from the beach but of the beach. Treading water I gazed back at the jungle. It looked prehistoric. All that foliage — the towering mahua trees, the coconut palms, the pandanus bushes and so many other trees and plants I’ll never be able to name — blended into one towering wall of green that rose up from the edge of the land and captured the last rays of the sinking sun. The tree bark glowed almost orange. I was overwhelmed with one intoxicating sensation: I am far from home.

That night, after a dinner of fresh shrimp and fish, accompanied by a stack of soft rotis and washed down with a lime soda, I climbed into bed in my bungalow. As I drifted off, a soft rain began to fall. I could hear the cicadas and the bats, the rain washing through the trees. I woke up 12 hours later.

The next few days I explored Havelock’s hiking spots and beaches, all excellent though none quite as stunning as Radha Nagar. One afternoon I went to the settler family’s house for lunch, which Barefoot arranged, and we sat on the floor and talked.

As Mr. Sikdar, dressed in flawless white, told us about the rapid development on the island, his wife laid out the meal: eggs soaked in coconut milk, stewed eggplant, fish marinated with mustard oil and spices and wrapped in plantain leaves and then cooked over a low flame, and sweet vermicelli pudding. We ate with our hands, and I left stuffed.

Havelock is just the beginning. During a previous trip, I explored the Mayabunder area, an eight-hour drive north of Port Blair. The road wends through a reserve for the Jarawa people, who remain hunters and gatherers.

Mayabunder offers more untrammeled beaches and landscapes of rice paddies and rainforest. Up here, the most interesting place to stay is the Koh Hee Island Home, run by a gentle soul named Saw John, an elder of another community, the Karen, who originally hail from Myanmar but came to the Andamans a century ago to farm.

Beyond Mayabunder, there are more remote and exquisite beaches, like Ross and Smith Island or Long Island.

Flying back to the mainland from Port Blair, after a week of bliss, we passed over one island that stood alone: North Sentinel. I’ve read a lot about this place. Down there live a small group of hunter and gatherers, maybe only 50 or 75 people, who have no contact with the outside world and survive off the jungle and the sea. The few people who have tried to step on their shore, including a young American missionary in 2018, have been killed.

Now this is truly a fiercely isolated place. But as I stared down at that drop of green surrounded by bright blue, I wondered: For how long?

Credit...Poras Chaudhary for The New York Times 

By :  Jeffrey Gattleman