Looking over our photos from Mumbai as I prepared to upload our final gallery couldn’t have been sadder. Enjoy – there won’t be any more for a while

As is the Indian way, Tina Blue View’s prices seem to have shot up dramatically since it got a place within the LP’s pages: their 100 rupee lower end has increased to 300 rupees. That said, the rooms are pleasant enough and the attached bathrooms are clean and come with western fittings.

The location is nice and there is a pleasant garden, although it was too hot to relax in when we were there. The staff are alright, although standards of service are somewhat less than we’d expect at home.

5/10

Our camera is slowly becoming more and more broken, so the photos are becoming less and less numerous – our apologies to everyone at home! We’ve still managed to capture the main sights though, and I’ve uploaded a bunch of snaps from Southern India for everyone to enjoy.

Azad Lodge was closed on our second visit to Port Blair, so we walked a little further up the hill and found Amina Lodge on the second floor of a shop in Aberdeen Bazaar. At 350 rupees per night (negotiated down from the normal price of 400), it was quite a lot more expensive than we’d hoped for, but the room was clean, the attached bathroom had a western loo and we got a TV and electronic mosquito repellent for our money. The room was insanely hot, but you can’t complain about that too much when you are on a desert island.

The owners of Amina are exactly what we expected Indian guest house owners to be like – the treated us like long lost relatives, showing us family pictures and giving us tea and fruit. It was a fun, if somewhat surreal, experience.

8/10

We arrived on Havelock Island at 8:30am, and with our Lonely Planet in hand, we set off to find ourselves some 50Rps a night beach huts. Sadly, the most recent LP is already awfully out of date when it comes to room rates, with most places seemingly doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling their prices. The cheapest we found was Green Valley Resort, who offered us a hut away from the beach and without a bathroom for 250 a night. We plumped for El Dorado instead: they gave us a hut right next to the beach, with bathroom, for 350 a night (the non-en suite huts were 150, but they were full). The only place we heard of with bargain basement huts was right next to the jetty – not exactly prime real estate.

Aside from our disappointment at the price, El Dorado was a nice place to stay: so nice that we stayed 11 days. The bar was lively and not over priced, the restaurant was average (but about as good as any other hotel), and the staff were pretty sound. Across the street there was a really nice restaurant that offered a good value breakfast for just 50 Rps.