North Bay, Port Blair

26 December 2014

Previous posts:
Trip to Andaman islands
Corbyn’s cove beach in Port Blair
Cellular Jail
Ross island

If you look at twenty rupee note carefully, a photo of a lighthouse can be seen. That lighthouse is situated in North Bay Island. It is trivial but interesting information. We went there not for the lighthouse but for coral reefs.

Lighthouse in North Bay
Our package was Ross Island + North Bay combo. Once we winded up our Ross Island tour, the boat took us to North Bay which took about 30 minutes. Technically North Bay is connected to Port Blair by landmass but I do not think there is a road to reach the place. Many places in Andaman are well connected by boat than road. So to reach North Bay, boat is easiest mode of transport.

Corals in North Bay
As we neared North Bay we were told about the options for viewing marine life. The large boats cannot anchor at North Bay. Building a Jetty requires digging in water thus damaging corals. Hence the big boats that we travel anchor at a distance and the passengers have to travel to the shore on small boats.



There are many options to view corals. One option is to ride on a glass bottom boat and have a look at the corals. Since water is clear in Andaman the corals can be viewed without much difficulty. All other options like Scuba diving, Snorkelling and sea walking require the person to get into water. We decided to try glass bottom boat as we had planned to do other activities in Havelock.

Brain corals
North Bay has good amount of corals which we could see from the glass boat. They are in various forms and shapes. The most distinguishing one was the brain coral. The boatman said that it was only seen in Andaman which I seriously doubted.

North Bay has some eateries that serve bad food. We were hungry and hence we ate whatever that was available. Later, we went to the part of the sea that was less crowded and happily played in water.  One need not worry about getting wet as changing rooms are available.



At 4PM we got the call from boatman to start. Reluctantly we got out of water and prepared for our return journey to Port Blair. The return journey was turbulent due to rough sea.



Note: At Aberdeen Jetty, boats are available for Ross Island and North Bay separately. Combined packages for Ross Island and North Bay are also available. We had taken the combo package. The same boat will be available for the entire journey. 

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