Travelling without moving

The Andaman Islands may well be paradise on earth but travelling around them is like going through the seven circles of hell. The gateway to this hell is the ferry ticket office. If you can pass through it portals and exit with a ticket you will gain - and will have deserved to do so - a place on one of the inter-island ferries that are the only means of travel between some of the islands. To buy such a ticket is like getting blood out of a stone, but yet so much harder and more complicated: it is knowing when the stone will be open and the precise time and location from which these drops of blood will fall, so you can cup your sorrowful, pleading hands beneath them.

Having made the painful decision not to idle away my entire three weeks on the islands on a palm-fringed stretch of sand, I needed to buy a ticket to get off Havelock Island and onward to the town of Rangat on Middle Andaman Island. This is a route less-travelled by travellers - many of whom do stay glued to Havelock by some unseen force - as Rangat offers no beaches, bars or restaurants at the other end. This does not mean it is a simple ticket to buy. On the contrary.

I set off around 8.30am for the ticket office to get there in time for the 9am opening. It is the only place at which tickets for the only ferry can be bought. The Bible told me the office opens at 9am, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the sweeping jungled hills and fields as I pedalled slowly through them on my bike. At the time, I didn't know that this would be the first of many utterly futile trips I would make over the coming days. When I got to the ticket office, initially just to find out times and dates, the sales counter was a catastrophe of humanity. People piled up and around a single window the size of a CD case, ramming scrunched up reservation slips, money and hands through the opening at the ticket officer. He sat, like a little king, oblivious to the suffering of his subjects, glasses perched on the end of his nose, very calmly, deliberately and s-l-o-w-l-y issuing tickets. There was theoretically one queue, but line discipline - never an Indian commodity in great supply - had fled the instant the window opened and now a bedlam of elbows, arms and bodies pushed and prised themselves in to the throng, to get their order in before anyone else.

There was no earthly way I was going to get any information there. The only ferry schedules pinned up nearby weren't for my destination, so I was at a loss. Wandering round in a daze, trying to decide what to do I spotted a shed that claimed grandly to be the place to provide tourists with information - a Tourist Information Centre, in fact. Inside a bored-looking man was playing with his mobile phone. After much careful and slow explanation on my part I managed to get the poor man to understand what I wanted and he kindly wrote out the times and destinations of all the ferries departing from Havelock, including those to Rangat. He also gave me the helpful advice that I should try to book my ticket three days in advance. At the time I didn't realise this would mean three days' time actually spent trying to book a ticket for a departure in three days' time! Had I known, I would have plunged a stake of sharp coral into my heart then and there as the pain would have been less than that which I subsequently endured trying to obtain a ticket. Either that or I might have jumped in the drink immediately to either swim the distance to the other island myself or to kill myself and put an end to the Sisyphean misery I would have to endure. However, for the moment, ignorance was bliss.

Having studied the handwritten schedule, I worked out that I should book my ticket today and now, as ferries didn't leave for Rangat every day. With a deep breath and deeper trepidation I approached the ticket office again - only to remember that I'd forgotten to bring my permit that gave me permission to be on the Andamans and which I would need to show to book any ticket. There was still time before the ticket office closed, so I leapt back on my bike to re-do the 20-minute ride I'd just covered to go and fetch my permit. Pedalling like fury, I scattered scraggy chickens and loose pebbles before and aft. Grabbing permit and passport (just in case) I jumped back on and returned to the ticket office as fast as I could. The humidity was already sticking my clothes damply to my skin and the breeze created by my frantic speed was a welcome cool respite.

The ticket counter scrum had miraculously disappeared. I was delighted. I should not have been. The office had closed an hour early as today was Republic Day, a national holiday. I was surprisingly calm as I went back to the Tourist Information Shed to check what time the ticket office would re-open tomorrow (perish the thought that such useful things should be displayed anywhere for people to see). The man restored my good cheer by telling me it would open again at 1.45pm today and I could book a ticket then. Excellent! All was not lost. All it meant was a third journey back to the jetty and the job would be done.

Back at the jetty at 1.45pm I found I'd been misinformed by the service there to inform me. The counter was open, sure, but not for the ticket I wanted. 'One ticket for Rangat on the 28th, please,' I asked.
'Only tickets for 3pm ferry today. Come back tomorrow 8.30am.'
'I can't book a ticket today for the 28th?' I asked, as if blind repetition would change the answer I did not want to hear.
'Come back tomorrow, 8.30am.' No, repetition had changed nothing. I didn't have time to pedal back again, pack, check out, return my hired bike and return in time for the 3pm ferry, so it would have to be tomorrow. I was still calm. I don't know why or how. I was worried that I was not yelling and screeching as this new setback, as I might normally be. Maybe the island mentality was seeping into me, its warmth and slow pace strangely chilling my usually hot blood.

On my fourth attempt to buy my passage from paradise, I got the the ticket office at 8am, just to be on the safe side and get in the queue for 8.30am opening. Indian office hours are as arbitrarily changeable as the wind and prone to total disappearance on occasion. A queue of about eight men was actually queuing up properly and in an orderly fashion and, hurrah!, the window was already open. I'd been right to come early. Pushing in to the front of the queue, I thrust my reservation slip into the window. Surprisingly, one of the men, usually oblivious and nonchalant about queue-jumping, wasn't happy.

'You have to join the queue,' he pointed out politely. And then I said something that would only ever work in India and never, ever in the UK. 'Ladies' queue,' I said with a tight smile. He grunted and mumbled something but I'd got away with it. This wasn't just an inspired creation on my part. In many public places there are separate channels for ladies and my quick thinking had created a new ladies' queue on one - me. But karma had other ideas for me.

'Only selling tickets for today ferry at 9am. Come back 9am for other tickets.' What!? I couldn't believe it. I was there before the time they had said and they still wouldn't sell me the ticket. But I was beginning to comprehend the incomprehensible: last-minute tickets for the next departing ferry were sold roughly an hour-and-a-half before that ferry left, after which you could buy advance tickets. I wandered off to find some breakfast while I waited till 9am. As I chewed my omlette, I mused over how the islanders knew about this bonkers system when there were clearly no signs or information to tell them and certainly nothing of the kind for tourists. In fact, bonkers systems are common in the arena of Indian travel and there is never an explanation of how the incalculable idiocy functions, yet Indians somehow know, without asking anyone or being told. How? Is it a genetic predisposition to make sense of the senseless? Are they born with fore-knowledge of complicated ticketing arrangements and counter-intuitive opening hours? Or does it come to them through their mother's milk? Does her weary experience of such things flow through her and into their blood, drop by drop, until their systems develop an immunity to and an understanding of the ridiculous? Or was it really pretty straightforward and I just hadn't grasped the thing?

At 8.30, my fifth attempt saw me back in position, forming my orderly queue of one lady, alongside a handful of Indian gentlemen and a young Argentinian couple I'd chatted to on the beach the day before and advised to get there early. The window had closed again but I resolved to stay welded to my spot, come what may, until it re-opened and not leave without that ticket.

Slowly the queue thickened, deepened and broadened till it was about six wide and several deep and could no longer be officially defined as a queue. All were imperceptibly trying to push in with a jut of the elbow, a nudge of the knee or a shuffle of the feet. I held firm, placing a hand on the wall next to the ticket window to prevent encroachment by any determined ladies trying to attack from the right flank.

Suddenly, blatantly, a young man in a rather too-tight-fitting pale yellow T-shirt squirmed into place in front of me. I had not expected dirty tactics from the left-flanking so-called gentlemen's queue. This was no gentleman.

'Er, excuse me,' I piped up in indignant-foreigner-abroad tones, 'I was in front of you. You have to join the queue at the back.' I'm surprised I didn't add, 'that's just not on, what,' I sounded so English, so uptight.

'Change places,' Yellow T-shirt answered, as the man in front of him wriggled and ducked out of the press of bodies, handing over a fistful of reservation slips and money. That really wasn't on, what! Place-holding for each other, while I - with no deputy to stand in for me - had to wait in line for as long as it took. But now he was there, there wasn't much I could do about it, but I was on my guard now...

9am came and went and the ticket window remained obstinately closed. Looking behind me I saw that the crowd had swelled with bright, hopeful latecomers, including quite a few foreigners. They were clearly not familiar with the system. "Ha, fools!" I thought, "You have no chance against my staying power and their pushing in. Losers!"

At 9.15, the window opened and a murmur of excitement ran through the throng, accompanied by a surge of shoving. The man behind the window handed through sheet after sheet of reservation slips that quickly dispersed into the crowd, then promptly closed the window again. "Temporary closure," I thought. "They'll open it again in a minute." They didn't. After another 15 minutes waiting, an announcement in Hindi came over the loudspeakers. The Indians in the crowd groaned. I asked Yellow T-shirt what was happening. 'Internet not working,' he said. 'Tickets no possible.' I felt empty. I felt numb with disappointment, but I still felt calm. I was there, I was at the front and I was sure it would be working again soon. I knew that the internet in The Andamans is, at best, patchy, so this was not unheard of. I waited. And waited. Then I waited a little bit more. Just a bit more.

An hour had passed. It was beginning to get hot now and I could feel my skin getting sticky. Smells began to intensify. Yellow T-shirt periodically raised his arm and placed his hand above the ticket window to alter his position. Every time he did so, an acrid blast of his BO assaulted me. I could smell whatever it is that Indian ladies put in their hair. Its thick, cloying, distinctive odour - not unpleasant, but not Pantene either - rose from their hot scalps and filled my airspace.

Now I found myself taking in the small personal details at my fellow sufferers, so close were they to me. One lady had a single long, dark loose hair lying down her back and I itched to remove it but didn't dare. I stared at it for a long time, mind empty. I watched in mild disgust, again unable to move, as a mosquito landed on another lady's bare shoulder and fed greedily from her. She didn't notice and eventually it flew off, bloated with its blood soup.

Yet another lady was wearing elaborate gold earrings with a chain that looped over the top of each ear and back down to the stud in the lobe. I noticed that the fixing of one of them had fallen off and the earring was in danger of falling out. I wanted to tell her but wasn't sure she'd understand the English and I didn't think I was up to miming 'Er, I think your earring is falling out' without provoking significant confusion. While she chatted away and head-wobbled with the other ladies, it seemed to remain in place.

Suddenly there was a commotion at the front of the gents' queue. A fat, pale, elderly foreign gentleman with thick black-framed, milk-bottle glasses was pushing into the front of their queue. Indignation bristled all round. But he had back-up, official back-up. He was accompanied by an equally fat policeman, his sand-coloured trousers straining at the belt and bulging unattractively either side of the seam at the groin. The policeman wore black wraparound sunglasses, which gave him a menacing air. He also hefted a truncheon in one hand. He said something in Hindi to the effect of ,'Get out of the way for this gentleman.' The Indians protested loudly but eventually moved approximately one millimetre. The Argentinian was not so happy. 'You have to join the line, my friend,' he said in stern English, clearly not having understood the policemen or the actions of the Indians. The fat man replied in Italian-accented English, 'I am over 65 and 'handicappata'. I can go to the front of the queue.'

Annoyingly and amazingly he was right. And the policeman was there to see his right enacted. In India, when booing tickets, there are many categories of people whose situation in life gives them the right to queue-jump with impunity or to have special queues just for them. Elderly men and women and disabled people (often still referred to here as cripples) are among these. Decorated war heroes of particular wars and specific battles (I have seen exhaustive signs listing these) are also duly honoured, as are the widows of same. While this is undoubtedly noble and just, it did not feel like it today. Milk Bottle Eyes looked nervous and tried not to catch anybody's gaze as they all adjusted to accept this mild injustice. Eventually the policeman moved away, satisfied that no harm would come to his protectee.

We waited and continued to wait. The trouble with enforced inactivity is that it gives you time to think, and re-think and change your mind. I began to review my options. Should I carry on waiting and hope that I could get my ticket, or should I give up and come back tomorrow? Should I just buy whatever the hell ticket I could to any other island and get the hell out of beautiful Havelock from which I could so far apparently never leave? I already had a significant investment of time and emotion in that wait and if I left now - two hours in - it would have been another colossal waste of time and I would forever wonder what might have been... No, I had to wait it out.

Milk Bottle Eyes, apparently now forgiven for his queue-jumping was in conversation with the Argentinian to pass the time. He switched to Spanish, having apparently lived some time in Buenos Aires and they began to discuss the unifying topic of men the world over - football. They listed and sorted their respective country's best players, by club, ability and flair, chatting away like old friends, any antagonism now buried in a shared joy of goals, stats and opinions. Yellow T-shirt was less relaxed. Fidgeting and tutting nervously his patience eventually gave out and he sent his replacement back into the queue while he went off somewhere else.

Finally, after another hour, the window opened again. But my soaring hopes were dashed once more. The internet now seemed to be working although at a stone-age speed, but now the ticket printing machine, which looked as old as time itself, was malfunctioning. Men came and went, talked and fiddled and at one point one ticket officer even put his feet up and opened the newspaper. I was bereft of hope, choked with indecision again. Was it stupid to wait anymore? Or a shameful waste of an entire morning to abandon my apparently unending vigil? I just couldn't decide.

Yellow T-shirt was now asking the ticket officer something.
'What did he say?' I asked.
'No internet, so no advance tickets, only for today.' This was a new outrage - if it was true. I was beginning to have my suspicions about Yellow T-shirt. He had a clutch of slips for at least four separate people - all apparently foreigners. I'd sneaked a look at his reservation slips. He was on a mission (poor sod!) for someone else and it was in his interests to get rid of any gullible tourists who would reduce the likelihood  of his getting his hands on the tickets he needed. I didn't trust him. I needed to hear this devastating piece of news from the ticket man himself. I squeezed in next to Milk Bottle Eyes and put my head as close to the window as possible:

'Is it possible to buy a ticket for Rangat for tomorrow?' I shouted slowly and carefully, so there would be no confusion.
'No possible today. No internet. Come back tomorrow 7am.' No apology for the delay or magnificent inconvenience caused, just the bald and devastating facts. I was numb with shock, so I asked the same question again, to be sure I'd not misheard the answer. It was the same.

'If I come back tomorrow - again - (I couldn't resist a heavy emphasis on the last word to make sure he knew of my suffering - he didn't notice it) I can definitely get a ticket for the same day?'
'Yes 100% sure, you can get a ticket for 9am ferry.'
'100% sure?'
'Yes,' irritation now, '100% sure.'

What else could I do? I had to accept the awful truth. I left the waiting crowds, now considerably thinned out as those with more sense than me had long abandoned all hope, and sat on a nearby step, head in hands. Including the first attempt today, I had waited a total of four hours - for nothing. NOTHING! I was too exhausted, too broken to even be angry. All I could think about was the poor islanders who weren't on holiday with all the time in the world. They'd also had to wait for nothing and most of them were still there as I got back on my bike and pedalled off. How the blazing hell did they keep sane?

I hardly slept that night, tense with anxiety about the impending repeat battle. I didn't know what I'd do if I didn't get a ticket this time. Short of abandoning the idea of visiting any of the other islands until I had to leave to get the ferry back to Port Blair to catch my flight out, I didn't see any other option. And even then, how could I be sure I'd get a ticket? I resolved to get off that bloody island tomorrow, wherever I ended up.

I was at the ticket office, backpack all packed and ready to go, at 6.30am and staggeringly, there were already a handful of Indians there waiting, but not in a queue. A couple of bags were on the floor in front of the ticket window. Place-savers! The cheek! Well, they could just fuck off! If they weren't physically in the queue they weren't going to get in front of me. I sat down on the floor with my backpack nearby. I wasn't moving an inch. At 6.55am the owner of the place-saving bags returned. By then a few people had formed a queue behind me. He gestured to his bag.

'My place,' he said. I looked him squarely in the eye, picked up his bags and handed them to him, saying, 'No, if you are not in the queue you have to join the end.'
'But this my place,' he wheedled.
'I don't care. I've been waiting in the queue since 6.30am and you were not waiting, so you have to go to the back.'

He wasn't happy and started appealing to the other men, to try to explain. I just looked at him again and said, louder this time, 'NO! You have to wait in the queue all the time.' He looked bewildered. This was not how it worked. Well, it was how it was working today! Every man, woman, waif and stray for themselves. Muttering darkly he moved off, not to the back of the queue, but at least behind me. Wow! I couldn't believe my own audacity and even more, that I'd got away with it.

At 7am, prompt the ticket window was flung open. The only man in front of me thrust his form and money through, lightening fast. Calmly the man wrote out his ticket by hand in a little ticket book. I didn't dare to breathe. I was seconds away from getting that ticket but I wouldn't believe it until I had the piece of paper in my hand. The man had his ticket and pushed his way out. I rammed my documents through the hole, stretching my whole arm inside, as if a greater proximity to the ticket officer would get me what I wanted any sooner. My heart was pounding and I was having difficulty breathing with the anxiety and tension of the moment. Without saying a word, the officer slowly, oh-so-slowly, filled in my ticket, my ticket! and handed it to me. It was small, flimsy and printed on rose pink paper but I wanted to yell and leap with joy, as if I'd found buried treasure. I finally had my ticket out of paradise. I had passed through the portals of hell. It had taken a mastery of the sport of extreme patience and six attempts over a period of three days. It could not be more difficult to gain admittance into real Heaven. 'Thank fuck for that!' I said, swearing out loud to no-one in particular. Then again, maybe Heaven wouldn't be so easy for me after all...