2022
We, for “we” read "the better half", decided to travel to the last bastion of relatively untouched land and water of Andaman & Nicobar Islands in the Spring of 2018. The Islands ,the name itself, sets your hair-raising with excitement and thrill of an adventure that most mainlanders have not experienced.
When lord murphy decides to test your patience trust me it will run thin at some point of time. I realized that the lord is having his blessings on us right from the start when we were trying to book Air Tickets, sitting in the Travel Agent's office. There were last three tickets were available for 22 December, and we were attempting this in October, the lady sitting on the counter managed to misspell my daughter's name. The look on my wife's face was "we are doomed".
Now my Organisation allows me to travel for holidays once in Two years. To my utmost horror, there was a clerical mistake on my behalf in my documentation in 2017. The result of which came out in Dec, days left to catch the flight: 10 days, when I came to know that the trip is not going to happen.
Though having to spend a fortune on flights I managed to find my way through this hurdle and gave my wife and daughter the best news of the year, THE HOLIDAY IS ON!!.
Finally, the planning and the pain of waiting ended and the journey began! The Journey was long with late night flights and thanks to the overenthusiasm of my family the weight of luggage exceeded half a Quintal! .Who on earth travels to an island destination with enumerable transfers and almost everywhere without trolley with that kind of weight.
Anyways I thought to myself what doesn't kill me only make me stronger. The comedy of error continued throughout our travel right from reaching the Pune airport just in the nick of time to seeing our ferry , from Port Blair to Havelock, sailing away right in front of our eyes even though we reached the damn place one hour in advance and then we begged the authorities to let us hop on to the next ferry, then waiting to get our turns for Scuba-Dive at North-Bay Island leaving it, due to lack of time to avoid missing our boat back home, only realizing that the boat waited an hour extra for someone who was too busy getting the right pout for a selfie!!.
We reached back home safe and sound, looking like Jarawa's (Tribes in Andaman), thanks to the Sunshine which didn't even budge for a day while we stayed there for Eight Long days. In the end, we came back with some sand in our feet and a heartful of happiness saying, "All Well that ends well". And last but not the least Thanking Lord Murphy for making our Journey and the entire experience unforgettable
