Travel in Port Blair

Port Blair is the airport for the Andaman Islands, and in our programme that is very nearly all it is. One tour out of the fifteen we sell in India comes here: the five-day travel component Paradise Andaman & Nicobar Islands, from EUR 410. Day one lands you at Port Blair, picks you up at the airport and puts you on a ferry to Havelock the same day, past a line of uninhabited islands. Day five brings you back across to the pier and transfers you directly to the airport for your flight home. There is no night in Port Blair on that plan, no hotel here, and no free afternoon in the town.

So the honest version of this page is that it is about a transit point rather than a stay. The four nights are on Havelock, and days two to four have nothing scheduled at all — the itinerary names sunbathing, a swim and snorkelling, then leaves the time entirely to you. Two ferry crossings and two airport transfers are the only movements in the five days. If you want the shape of the beach stay itself, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands page covers it. This page exists to be clear about what happens at the two ends of it.

The thing Port Blair is known for is the Cellular Jail, the British penal colony that gives the islands their history. It is not in our itinerary. Neither is Ross Island, nor Corbyn's Cove, nor the evening sound-and-light show at the jail, nor the marine and anthropological museums. Nothing in the five days is a sightseeing day, in Port Blair or anywhere else. The islands' penal history is true of the place and not of the plan. If you are travelling to the Andamans to see that history, this component as written does not take you to it, and that is far better said now than discovered on day five.

One line in our own itinerary deserves naming, because it reads as a promise. Day five carries the title "Historical Tour". The day it then describes is the morning ferry back to Port Blair and a direct transfer to the airport — no jail, no museum, no guided walk. The heading is left over from something the day does not contain. Trust the description. If a historical morning in Port Blair matters to you, raise it when you enquire and we will tell you what is actually possible before anything is priced.

Getting here is its own question. The five days begin when you land at Port Blair and end when you are dropped back at the same terminal, so the flight to the islands is not one of them. It comes off the Indian mainland and has to be built into whatever route the beach is attached to, which is why we price the two together. International flights are not included, here or anywhere in our catalogue. What is included is the standard India list: hotel accommodation, breakfast, a German-speaking guide, 24-hour contact with our team throughout, and a bottle of water on arrival. No hotel is named for this component — that is settled when the trip is put together — and there is no five-star or luxury tier on any of our trips.

Every trip we sell is private and guided, with no fixed departure dates, so the component attaches to your India route on the dates that suit it. The two ferry crossings are the fixed points in the plan; if a particular month matters to you, say so early and we will confirm what runs before you commit. Two other five-day beach components have the same shape, should the Andamans turn out not to be worth the extra flight: Goa from EUR 350 and Marari in Kerala from EUR 400. Neither involves Port Blair. And the Nicobars, despite the name on the component, appear in none of its days — the trip stays between Port Blair and Havelock, and the Nicobar Islands are not visited at all.