Port Blair in Full — 4 Nights with Baratang, Ross Island and the Marine Park

After the airport and the hotel, the first stop is Corbyn’s Cove, a palm-edged beach a few kilometres from the centre, good for stretching your legs after the flight. The Cellular Jail comes next. It took ten years to build and was finished in 1906, and its design kept every prisoner out of sight of every other. If the courtyard show is running on your evening and you have the energy, stay for it; we check the language and the timing when your dates are fixed.

An early call and a long drive north. Past the checkpoint the road enters forest reserved for the Jarawa, where traffic moves in escorted convoys and may neither stop nor take pictures. After the vehicle ferry, the day’s centrepiece is on the water: a narrow boat threading a channel roofed with mangrove, and then a walk inland to caves hung with limestone formations. You return the same way and reach the hotel around dusk. The mud volcano is not part of the day and is not promised; it is considered only if access has reopened.

An easier day, spent in the harbour. A boat from the waterfront crosses first to Ross Island, the seat of the British administration until the 1940s, where a church, a bakery and officers’ quarters stand roofless under strangler figs. North Bay, the next stop, is about the coral: glass-bottom boats and snorkelling are offered there and paid for on the spot. Both crossings are short and both are called off in rough water, in which case this day changes places with another.

Morning boats leave Wandoor for the Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park, where one of two islands, Jolly Buoy or Red Skin, is open to visitors at a time. You go to whichever is open, for clear shallows over coral; which one it is, and whether a permit can be had for the day, depends on the park’s current opening and operating conditions. Chidiya Tapu, at the southern end of South Andaman, is the sunset stop that follows, but only if the marine park boat returns early enough. If it does not, we say so on the day and do not rush it.

Breakfast, then the short transfer to the airport. Because every night of this trip is in Port Blair, there is no ferry to worry about on the last morning, which is one of its quiet advantages. Flights leave mostly before noon. If yours is later, the Samudrika museum is the best use of a spare hour.