I was staring up at the palm trees and wondering how much damage a full coconut could do if it landed on my head when a shadow crossed my eye-line, then another and another.
I sat up alarmed to find a group of immaculate schoolchildren in their blue and brilliant-white uniforms, hair pasted to their heads, staring at me.
A tiny boy about five years old shinned up the nearest coconut tree and knocked down a fruit. He cracked it open and gave it to me. The children stood in a circle and watched my face as I drank. Then all hell broke loose.
The children started ripping off their uniforms in unison; starched white shirts were kicked in the sand, shoes and socks flew through the air, shorts and skirts were relinquished with wild abandon until the whole group were charging around the beach in their droopy pants with the ageing elastic defying gravity.
They ran around the beach, up and down the trees and in and out of the sea with healthy savagery, relieved to be outside after a humid day incarcerated in the classroom. The beach was their playground. They taught me Bengali words by writing and drawing pictures in the sand and created things out of the pampas grass - a pair of glasses, a pipe, a grasshopper.
We spent the afternoon together until the sun set and the fires were lit in the neighbouring huts. The smoke began drifting up through the thatched roofs and the children were called in for their evening meal. We said a sad farewell and I walked along the dirt road to Number 2 village to the road-side food stand that serves the best samosas on the planet.
This was Havelock, one of more than 300 tropical islands that make up the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, far removed from mainland India. Most of the islands remain uninhabited and are densely forested surrounded by coral reefs rich in marine life.
There is a sense of community in Havelock with families living side by side with their animals in small thatched huts and sharing outdoor washing facilities with their neighbours. With good fertile land and a good climate, most foods can be grown and the Bengali settlers remain self-sufficient.
With only one bus serving the island, most people travel on foot to the villages which are not named but are distinguished by numbers 1-7.
As well as the food stand, Number 2 village is also the home of 'the chilli man' - a man who can eat the most fiery chilies without flinching, whereas other mortals, myself included, come out in raging blisters at mere skin contact with the vegetable.
It is a bureaucratic nightmare to get to the Andamans, (which is inadvertently a good thing), but it is well worth the queueing, the waiting and the frustration to stay among a community as yet unspoilt by tourism - a rare find in India.
Hannah Lewis, 29, from London, is a freelance writer and radio producer.
