Getting to the Andamans, and between the islands

There is one airport, and everything else is a boat. That single fact shapes every Andaman itinerary more than anything you choose.

By air, which is how nearly everyone comes

Every flight lands at Veer Savarkar International Airport in Port Blair (IXZ). There is no other airport you can fly into, and there is no airport on Swaraj Dweep or Shaheed Dweep — the islands most people are actually going to.

Direct flights run from Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Chennai is the shortest hop at around two hours and is the most common way in.

Book the earliest arrival you can bear. Not for the day itself, but for the morning after: inter-island ferries leave early, and a late-afternoon landing means your first island morning is already gone.

By sea, which is a different holiday

Passenger ships sail to Port Blair from Chennai, Kolkata and Visakhapatnam, roughly three to four times a month.

They are slow in a way that is easy to underestimate:

• Chennai — around 60 hours
• Kolkata — around 66 to 70 hours, the longest of the three

That is two and a half to three days at sea, each way. Tickets come from the shipping office at the relevant port rather than an app, and are worth buying well in advance.

This is a decision, not a saving. If the crossing is the point — and for some people it genuinely is — it is a remarkable way to arrive. If you are trying to save money on a week's holiday, six days of it are now boat.

Sailing dates move. Confirm with the shipping office rather than a blog, including this one.

The connection that catches people

The trip is almost always: fly to Port Blair → ferry to an island → ferry back → fly home. Four moves, and two of them are at the mercy of the sea.

• Do not book a same-day flight-to-ferry connection. If the flight is late you miss the boat, and the next one may be tomorrow.
• Do not fly out the same morning you leave an island. This is the one that actually ruins trips. A cancelled or delayed ferry on your last morning and you are watching your flight leave from the wrong island.
• Sleep in Port Blair the night before you fly home. One night, and it removes the only genuinely unrecoverable failure in the itinerary.

Between the islands

Ferries run Port Blair → Swaraj Dweep → Shaheed Dweep and back, several times a day in season, operated by both government and private services. Journey times and which islands connect directly vary by operator and by season — the detail is in which island should you stay on.

The thing worth internalising: in rough weather the ferries stop. Not "run late" — stop. That is the mechanism by which weather changes an Andaman itinerary, and it is why every plan here should survive losing one morning.