
Kashmir in Tulip Season
Six nights across Srinagar, Gulmarg and Pahalgam in the fortnight the tulips are actually out, with a houseboat night your children will talk about for years.
Six nights across Port Blair, Havelock and Neil, Radhanagar at sunset, snorkelling taught gently, and the Cellular Jail’s story told the way it deserves.
The Andamans are two holidays wearing one name. There is the beach one, Radhanagar consistently ranked among Asia’s best, water so clear the boats look airborne, and the Indian one, because the Cellular Jail is not a stop on the way to the beach, it is a place every Indian family should stand in once, and we give it a proper morning and the sound-and-light evening, not forty minutes.
In between: the ferry across the strait, snorkelling at Elephant Beach taught patiently enough for grandmothers and eight-year-olds, our record holder was sixty-nine and refused to get out of the water, and Neil Island, where the entire agenda is a bicycle and a sunset.
December to March, the sea behaves. We do not run this in the monsoon, and we will not sell it to you then either.
Seven days, start to finish. The route, then the rhythm of it.
Arrive Port Blair. Cellular Jail in the afternoon, the sound-and-light after dark.
Ferry to Havelock. Radhanagar for the last two hours of light.
Elephant Beach by boat, snorkelling for everyone who wants, the reef does the rest.
A free day, which on Havelock is not the same as an empty one. Kayaking through the mangroves for the keen.
Ferry to Neil. Bicycles, Laxmanpur beach, the natural bridge at low tide.
Back to Port Blair; Chidiya Tapu’s sunset point or the museum, your call.
Depart.
The facts most itineraries leave out. We print them because they are what decides whether this trip suits your family.
A comfortable hotel above the harbour at Port Blair, a beachfront resort on Havelock two minutes’ barefoot walk from the sand, and the best of Neil’s small resorts, where ‘best’ means the garden and the fish thali.
Families, couples, and anyone celebrating something. Swimmers get the most out of it, but non-swimmers snorkel happily with vests and our patience. December to March only.
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