Andaman and Goa Honeymoon Tour

Whichever Goan airport you fly into, Mopa in the north or Dabolim in the south, a driver with your names on a sign is waiting at the exit. The drive takes you to a restored Indo-Portuguese villa hotel in the Bardez villages behind the northern beaches, a home once built by a Goan family with high ceilings, a pillared veranda and a courtyard shaded by mango trees. From Mopa the trip takes under an hour, while Dabolim is a little farther, and our host uses the time to talk you through the next twelve days and give you your travel documents.

Bardez was the first part of Goa the Portuguese took in the 1500s, and the villages here still show it. Whitewashed chapels stand at every crossroads, old houses carry the date of their building above the door, and small taverns serve local drinks to men playing cards in the afternoon. After a rest, take a short walk with a member of the hotel staff through the lanes around your villa, past paddy fields and village wells. If jet lag is heavy, simply spend the afternoon by the pool and leave the walking for tomorrow, when the light is cooler and the lanes are busier.

As evening falls, your driver takes you a few minutes away to Saligao, where the white neo-Gothic church of Mae de Deus rises among palm trees. Built in the 1870s, its pointed spires and turrets look more like a church in northern Europe than in the tropics, and in the evening it is lit up against the dark sky. Dinner follows at a family-run Goan restaurant nearby, where you can start with dishes from the Catholic home kitchen: sorpotel, a rich pork stew, eaten with sannas, the soft steamed rice cakes raised with toddy. Overnight in Goa.

Goan villages wake to the sound of a bicycle horn. Each morning the poder, or baker, rides from house to house with a basket of fresh bread, a custom that dates back to the Portuguese, who brought leavened bread to Goa and taught local bakers to use toddy as the yeast. Our team arranges for you to visit a village bakery before breakfast to see the wood-fired oven at work and taste warm poi, a hollow bread made partly from wheat bran, and the crusty rolls called pão. Bring cash if you want to buy a few loaves for breakfast back at the villa.

Late morning you go to Mapusa, the main market town of North Goa, where the covered market is busiest on Fridays, when villagers come in from the surrounding countryside. Stalls sell strings of dark red Goan sausages, piles of dried fish, jars of pickled mango, cashew nuts, local honey and spices by weight. Women from nearby villages sit on the ground with baskets of seasonal fruit and vegetables, and the smell of chilies and vinegar hangs in the air. Your guide helps you buy a spice mix for xacuti or vindaloo to take home and explains how each one is used.

In the afternoon, after lunch and a rest at the villa, you drive to Reis Magos Fort on the north bank of the Mandovi River. The Portuguese built it in the 1550s to protect the river approach, and it was later used as a prison before being carefully restored and opened to the public as a cultural center. Its red laterite walls rise in steps above the river, and from the top bastion you look across the water to the Panjim waterfront and the Miramar beach. Stay until the sun goes down behind the river mouth, then return to your villa for dinner. Overnight in Goa.

The morning begins at the jetty in Ribandar, a short drive from Panjim, where a free government ferry carries cars, bicycles, motorbikes and people across a narrow channel of the Mandovi to Divar Island. The crossing takes only a few minutes, but it feels like moving back several decades. On the island, quiet roads run between paddy fields and mangroves, and old houses with crumbling balconies stand among the coconut palms. Your guide takes you up to the hilltop church of Our Lady of Compassion at Piedade, from where you can see the white towers and domes of Old Goa across the river.

Divar's villages keep many Goan customs alive, including the Bonderam festival in August, when villagers parade with flags and floats to recall old disputes over land boundaries. After a walk through the lanes you return to the mainland for lunch at a small restaurant serving Goan Hindu dishes, such as fish cooked with kokum and coconut, and tender cashew fruit stir-fried in season. Afterward you cross into Panjim to climb the crisscrossing white steps up to the 1619 Immaculate Conception church, whose huge bell came from the ruins of an Old Goa church.

After dark, a little restaurant in the old quarter of the capital hosts a night of fado, the mournful songs of Portugal that Goan singers took up and made their own. Performances are intimate, often a single singer with one or two guitars, and the menu brings together Goan and Portuguese cooking: caldo verde, the soup of kale and potato, alongside prawn rissóis and a plate of bebinca. Fado nights do not run every evening, so we confirm the date when you book, and if there is no show on your night, a Goan mandó performance can replace it. Overnight in Goa.

Goa's quieter northern beaches lie across the Chapora River from the busy coast of Baga and Calangute, and today you spend the morning on two of them. Morjim is a long, flat beach where olive ridley turtles come ashore to lay eggs in winter, and its northern end is protected by the forest department, so please stay out of fenced nesting areas. A short drive north takes you to Ashwem, a stretch of soft sand with a few shaded beach cafés and calm water in the dry season. Spread a towel under a palm, swim, and take a long lunch facing the sea.

In the afternoon you visit a small family distillery in the hills for a tasting of feni, the spirit made in Goa from either cashew fruit or coconut sap. The cashew version is distilled from late February to May, when the fruit ripens, and outside that season the family explains the process using their old copper pots and clay vessels. Try it neat in small sips, or mixed with lime, salt and soda the way Goans usually drink it. Some distilleries also make urrak, a lighter first distillation drunk only in the summer months, and you may be offered a sample of that too.

No plans are fixed for the evening, which leaves time to repack slowly ahead of tomorrow's flights. Many couples spend the evening in Assagao or Siolim, two villages known for their small restaurants set in old homes and gardens, where the menus mix Goan dishes with European cooking. Your driver can take you to any of them and wait. If you would rather stay in, the villa kitchen can serve a quiet dinner in the courtyard, with Goan fish curry, red rice and a glass of local wine under the trees. Overnight in Goa.

Breakfast comes early, and then it is off to the airport to cross the whole width of India. No airline flies straight from Goa to Port Blair, so we pick the best connection on your date via Chennai, Bangalore or Kolkata; with the change of planes, count on six to eight hours door to door. Domestic airlines allow fifteen kilograms of checked luggage on most fares, so pack accordingly or ask us to add extra allowance. The final leg, over the open water of the Bay of Bengal, gives you your first view of the green islands below.

Our island host waits in the small arrivals hall at Veer Savarkar International Airport, and the hotel is no more than twenty minutes away by car. The Andaman Islands run on Indian Standard Time, but the sun rises and sets far earlier here than on the west coast, often by around 5:30 pm in winter, so evenings start early. After check-in, take a gentle walk along the waterfront at Marina Park or simply rest after the day's travel and enjoy dinner at the hotel. Overnight in Port Blair.

Fifteen minutes by boat from the Aberdeen jetty lies Ross Island, now officially Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, which served as the British headquarters in the islands until the 1941 earthquake and the Japanese wartime occupation emptied it. Its brick church, bakery, printing press and the commissioner's residence are now held together, or pulled apart, by the roots of huge strangler figs, a scene that feels closer to Cambodia than to colonial England. Spotted deer and peacocks walk freely among the ruins, and your guide explains how life looked here for the British families who lived on this small island.

Following lunch, your guide leads you through the Cellular Jail, completed in 1906, where the colonial government locked away those who fought for Indian independence. Seven spokes of single cells once radiated from a central tower, and each cell faced the back wall of the next wing, so prisoners could neither see nor talk to each other. Three of the original wings survive, and the museum inside tells the story of the men held here, including the freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Climb the central tower at the end for a wide look across the harbor and Ross Island. Allow about an hour and a half here.

After dark you go back to the prison courtyard for the light and sound show, staged among the surviving wings. Narration, music and lighting tell the history of the prison and the people who suffered in it, and the evening shows in English and Hindi are often booked out in high season, so we reserve your seats in advance. Running for roughly sixty minutes, it explains better than any book why these islands hold such meaning for Indians. Afterward, dinner can be fresh seafood at one of the simple restaurants near the Aberdeen Bazaar clock tower. Overnight in Port Blair.

Your driver takes you to the Haddo jetty in the morning for the private catamaran to Havelock, officially named Swaraj Dweep since 2018. Depending on the vessel and the swell, you are at sea for anywhere from ninety minutes to about two and a half hours, in a cooled cabin with assigned seats; a few boats also have a small open deck at the stern. Keep your passport or ID handy, as it is checked at the jetty. On arrival at Havelock, our island team meets you and drives you to a beach resort set among the forest trees, where your cottage is only a few steps from the sand.

Havelock is the largest island in Ritchie's Archipelago and the most visited in the Andamans, yet much of it is still covered in tall tropical forest. Its roads link a handful of villages, settled after Indian independence by families from Bengal and given simple numbers, from Village No. 1 to Village No. 7. After lunch at your resort, take the afternoon off by the water, or rent a scooter or bicycle to see how island life works. Shops in the small market at No. 3 sell coconuts, snacks, sunscreen and fresh fruit, and everyone seems to know each other.

Around four, the car crosses to the west coast and Radhanagar Beach, numbered Beach No. 7 on local maps, a long curve of fine white sand backed by giant mahua and padauk trees. The beach faces west, so the sun sets right over the water, and the shallow sea here stays gentle on most days. Lifeguards watch the main swimming area, and flags show where it is safe to swim; stay inside the marked zone. Look out for the small path at the northern end that leads to Neil's Cove, a quieter corner with clear water. You return to your resort for dinner. Overnight in Havelock.

A morning boat from the Havelock jetty takes you to Elephant Beach, a sandy cove on the island's west coast that is only reachable by sea or a forest trail. Plan on half an hour on the water each way; visibility tends to be best early, before the breeze stirs up the sand. Along the shoreline, the trunks of fallen trees lie on the sand, left behind by the 2004 tsunami, which changed the shape of this beach. A guided snorkeling session is included, with masks, fins and life jackets, and a guide stays close to you in the water, so you can join in even if you rarely swim.

Just off the beach, a shallow reef of hard and soft coral shelters parrotfish, butterflyfish, clownfish and the occasional turtle. Sea conditions decide how long you can stay in, and on some days the boat operator may limit the time, so follow the guide's instructions. Glass-bottom boat rides and other water sports are also offered on the beach for those who would rather stay dry, at an extra cost. Before leaving, take a short walk along the sand and enjoy the cool shade of the forest at the edge of the beach while the boat waits.

Back at the resort after lunch, the afternoon is reserved for the two of you in the spa. Your couples' session, about an hour and a half, uses coconut oil and island herbs and ends with time to rest in a quiet room overlooking the garden. The treatment is included in your package, and the spa will adjust pressure and choose oils to suit you. Later, take a drink out to your cottage deck and see the sea go from silver to dark. Dinner is your choice, and the kitchen will happily grill whatever fish came in that morning. Overnight in Havelock.

If you can face a dark alarm, ask the driver for a pre-dawn run over to Kalapathar Beach, on the side of Havelock that faces the sunrise. The beach is named for the black rocks scattered at its ends, and in the soft light of dawn the turquoise water and pale sand look almost unreal. Few people come this early, so you will likely have the place to yourselves, apart from a few local fishermen. Bring a light shawl, as mornings by the sea can be cool, and take time to walk along the shore before returning to your resort for a slow breakfast.

Late morning brings a guided kayaking trip through the mangrove creeks of Havelock, paddling in a double kayak through narrow channels where roots arch overhead and mudskippers hop along the banks. The guide explains how mangroves protect the islands from storms and shelter young fish and crabs. Trips usually last two to three hours and suit beginners, as the water in the creeks is calm. Some operators also run night trips in certain months, when tiny glowing plankton light up the water as you paddle, and we can arrange one instead if the season allows.

For your final Havelock evening the resort lays a table for two right where the sand meets the tide line, lanterns and a menu of grilled fish, island prawns and tropical fruit, prepared by the resort's chef. Staff serve and then step away, leaving you with the sound of the waves and a sky full of stars, as there is little light pollution on the island. If the weather turns, the dinner moves to a covered deck. It is the best way to end your stay on Havelock before tomorrow's crossing to Neil. Overnight in Havelock.

After breakfast and a last swim, you check out and board the private catamaran to Neil Island, renamed Shaheed Dweep in 2018. It is roughly sixty minutes across, with the forested ridge of Havelock slowly shrinking astern. Neil is much smaller than Havelock, roughly seven kilometers end to end, and much quieter, with a few villages, vegetable farms and banana groves, and no traffic lights at all. A local driver collects you at the pier for the short run to your resort, whose cottages are scattered through a coconut grove behind the sand.

In the afternoon, head to Bharatpur Beach, a short walk from the jetty, where a shallow lagoon of clear water lies over coral beds close to shore. Glass-bottom boats take visitors out over the reef for a view of the corals and fish without getting wet, and snorkeling is also possible at an extra cost. The water here is calm and good for a swim, and a few beach shacks sell coconut water and snacks. Spend an hour or two at the beach, and keep a little time for a nap at the resort before the evening.

Neil is known for its sunsets, and Laxmanpur Beach No. 1 on the island's west coast is the place to see them. A wide sweep of white sand runs along the shore, with low trees and a few small stalls selling fresh coconut water and fried snacks at the top of the beach. Find a spot near the water and watch the sky turn orange, red and finally purple as the sun goes down. As light fades, crabs come out on the sand and fishing boats return to shore. Head back to your resort for a dinner of island curries. Overnight in Neil.

Neil's eastern edge faces the morning sun, and Sitapur Beach at the southern tip is where locals go to watch the sunrise. The drive from your resort takes about fifteen minutes, and the beach is rocky in places, with limestone cliffs eroded by the waves. As the light rises, the sea changes color from grey to deep blue. Swimming is not recommended here because of strong currents, but the walk along the sand is lovely in the cool of dawn. You return to your resort for breakfast and a short rest before setting out again.

Next comes the natural rock bridge at Laxmanpur Beach No. 2, nicknamed Howrah Bridge by islanders with roots in Bengal, which your guide visits only when the tide is out. The arch is formed of coral and rock, and at low tide the pools around it reveal sea cucumbers, starfish, small crabs and even the odd octopus. Wear shoes with good grip, as the coral is sharp and slippery, and do not touch or step on the living coral. The walk takes about twenty minutes each way, and your guide explains how the arch was formed.

In the afternoon, rent bicycles and ride the quiet roads of Neil, where little traffic and flat terrain make cycling easy. The roads pass paddy fields, banana and vegetable farms, and small houses where families farm the island's fertile soil, much of the produce being sent to Havelock and Port Blair. Stop at a roadside stall for a cold coconut or a plate of fresh fruit, and expect friendly questions about where you come from. Eat tonight at a simple place by the bazaar, where the blackboard menu depends entirely on what the boats landed. Overnight in Neil.

Late in the morning you sail from Neil to Port Blair by private catamaran, about ninety minutes to two hours on the water. Our driver meets you at the Haddo jetty and takes you to your hotel, where your room is ready for the final night and a cool shower washes off the salt of the crossing. For lunch, try a town seafood restaurant and order the local fish curry, a recipe with coconut, tamarind and green chilies that blends Bengali, Tamil and Burmese influences, reflecting the mix of people who have settled on these islands over the past century.

In the afternoon you could visit the Samudrika Naval Marine Museum, run by the Indian Navy, which has displays on the island's coral reefs, marine life and the indigenous tribes of the Andamans, as well as a large skeleton of a blue whale. Under an hour is enough for its compact galleries, and your guide adds context on the islands' earliest peoples. Alternatively, the Anthropological Museum covers the tribes in more depth, with tools, baskets and canoes. Both close on some weekdays, so your guide checks the opening days for your date.

About an hour before sunset you drive south to Chidiya Tapu, the southern tip of South Andaman, about twenty-five kilometers from the town. Its name means bird island, and the forest here is home to many species, including the Andaman woodpecker and the white-bellied sea eagle. The beach at the end of the road faces west across the sea, and the sun sets behind the small islands offshore. It is a calm and fitting final evening in the islands, before returning to Port Blair for your last dinner of the trip. Overnight in Port Blair.

Your last breakfast is followed by the short ride to Veer Savarkar International Airport and the flight back to the mainland. Onward connections home run via the big mainland hubs such as Chennai, Delhi or Kolkata, and we always leave a generous buffer between the two flights. Arrive at the airport at least two hours before departure, as security checks can be slow. If your flight is in the afternoon, you can spend the morning at Corbyn's Cove, a small palm-fringed beach just outside the town.

Across thirteen days you have tasted Goan bread fresh from the oven, crossed the Mandovi on a village ferry, listened to fado in Panjim, snorkeled over Andaman coral and watched the sun set over three islands. Two seas, two cultures, and many quiet moments together. When you are ready to come back, the Kerala backwaters or the hill stations of the Western Ghats would make a fine next trip, and our team will be glad to help. Safe travels.