Namaste from Delhi, where we are spending a few days with our friend Andrew on our way from Rajasthan to Varanasi. Andrew has been playing the dutiful host, taking us to Embassy pool parties, reacquainting our digestive systems with steak and cheese and showing us the best place in town to buy a portable hard drive. Now back to where we were at the end of the last blog – thousands of feet above the Bay of Bengal on our way to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

When the explorer Marco Polo wrote about the Andmans he described the locals as being cannibals with the heads of dogs. Bullmastiffs to be precise. More than likely this uncharitable description was designed to keep others from coming to the paradise he had found. Every one of the 200 islands has miles of white sandy beaches; mangroves swamps and lush jungle, lapped at by luminous turquoise water. The surrounding seas also contain an amazing array of life making it one of the best places to dive in the world. And as far as we could see, not one bullmastiff.

Marco Polo may have played-up his description of the locals, but genuine monsters do lurk in the islands in the form of saltwater crocodiles. They were only discovered last year when one of them killed an American tourist while she was snorkeling off the beach. Her boyfriend saw the whole thing, but when he went back to town to raise the alarm, the locals (who knew nothing of their crocodile neighbours) suspected he had killed her and promptly locked him in the town jail. Luckily his girlfriend’s camera washed up a few days later, which had landed on the sea bed at such an angle that it had captured the whole incident on film. They caught the offending croc and sentenced him to life imprisonment in the local zoo where we paid him a visit. He looked thoroughly depressed but not very repentant.

As you can imagine there wasn’t much snorkeling going on on the Andamans, but there was still plenty of diving, which is one of the main reasons we were there. We were both complete novices, so had to start off learning the basics of breathing underwater, managing our oxygen supply and what to do if it runs out. By the end of the first day we were diving a coral reef a few meters down. By day five we were swimming fin-to-fin with sharks, moray eels and octopus and qualified to dive down to 30 meters.

We also did a night dive with torches to illuminate the sleeping fishes and crustaceans which only come out after dark. We also waved our hands around like idiots to create amazing luminous trails created by the phosphorescent algae. We took many pictures of our underwater escapades but unfortunately our water-poof camera (bought from a local shop) was not quite as resistant to fluid as the back of the packet suggested.

The diving and scenery were spectacular and relaxing, but what really made our time there were the people we met. We spent ten days on the same resort, and so met lots of other divers and travellers. We then hopped over to a smaller island for a couple of days with some of the group and went in search of a secret beach and tried our hand at spear fishing on one of the reefs. None of the tropical fish looked particularity palatable so we dumped the spears and went snorkeling instead, looking over our shoulders all the time to check for pesky crocs!

After the Andamans we flew to Delhi to spend some time with our friend Andrew who has been working as a publisher out here for the last year. He has clearly embraced Indian life, meeting us off the plane dressed in full white kurtha and introducing us to his beautiful and bubbly Indian girlfriend Vibha.

They were amazing hosts, taking us to the local restaurants, bars and clubs which we would have never found on our own, and introducing us to momos – little steamed parcels of fish, meat and vegetables. We also had our eardrums pounded with Bollywood baselines pumped out from Vibha’s custom car stereo.

During the day, while Andrew worked, we used his driver, Praveem, who took us around the sites of Delhi. No need to go into great depth, but there’s more of a Muslim influence in the north, because it was conquered by the Moghuls back in ye days of olde, so the architecture is Islamic and the dress codes at the sites is stricter. Pipa was conscious of this before we went out, but even so, she was still made to don a floor length blue and white polka dot nightie at one of the mosques, much to her annoyance. Apparently polka dot nighties are soooo 2010.

We used Delhi as a base, from where we travelled down to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which has rightly earned its place as one of the seven wonders of the world. It is very big, very beautiful and very popular. We got up at 5am to avoid the crowds, and saw the sun rise over the white marble palace which was stunning. Unfortunately one of my flip flops broke, and it was too early to buy new ones, so i had to buy the shoes off the feet of a rickshaw driver. The irony being that as soon as you get to to Taj Mahal you have to take your shoes off anyway.

The rest of Agra is not quite so beautiful, so after seeing the Taj and taking a tour of Agra Fort, where the Taj’s creator was imprisoned, we spent the rest of the afternoon chilling  by the pool. That night we got a six hour taxi all the way back to Delhi, driven by a man who kept himself from falling asleep by chewing copious amounts of Betel nut, and then driving like a wired maniac. We made it back alive, and were then treated to a very fine mutton biriyani by Andrew and Vibha Ji.

We then spent one more day in Delhi before moving onto to Jaipur in Rajsthan where we shall pick up next time.

We hope you are all well. Love to you all as always and we shall speak soon we hope.

Michael and Pipa x