When to visit the Andamans — season, weather and tides

Two different clocks decide what you see here. The season decides whether the sea lets you out at all; the tide decides what the beach looks like on the day you stand on it. Most visitors plan for the first and are caught out by the second.

When to come, month by month

There is no single “best time” — the dry months and the wet months fail in opposite directions, and which matters depends on what you are here for.

Month	Conditions
January	Dry, cloudless — harshest sun of the year
February	Dry, cloudless — harsh sun
March	Dry, cloudless — harsh sun
April – May	Building towards the monsoon; hot and increasingly humid
June	~100% wet — near-continuous rain
July	~100% wet — near-continuous rain
August	~75% wet
September	~50% wet
October	~30% wet — the shoulder, often fine
November	Good
December	Good

“Season” is not an official thing

Weather is one question; tourist season is another, and the second one has no fixed definition here.

Broadly, October is the soft start — things reopen, operators come back, but it is tentative and weather-dependent. November is when the season properly begins, and it runs through to around the middle or end of May.

But there is no official season. Each tour operator sets their own dates, they do not agree with each other, and everyone adjusts to what the weather is actually doing that year. So peak pricing, minimum stays and which boats are running will differ between operators for the same week.

The practical upshot: confirm season dates with whoever you are actually booking with, rather than assuming a published range applies. Note too that April and May are firmly in season commercially while being hot and humid in weather terms — high prices and hard sun at the same time.

The dry months bite differently

January, February and March are dry and largely cloudless — which means the sun is at its most punishing. There is no cloud cover to hide behind and you are close to the equator. People arrive expecting “pleasant winter” and burn badly on day one.

Treat it seriously: cover up rather than reapply, keep out of the open between roughly 11 am and 3 pm, drink more than you think you need, and remember that a rash guard in the water beats sunscreen you have already washed off — and does not end up on the reef.

November and December are the sweet spot for most people: dry enough to be reliable, without the glare of the deep dry season.

The wet months, honestly

June and July are the hard ones. Not “occasional showers” hard — the rain can fall continuously for weeks, without a break of even a few minutes. It is a different order of wet from a mainland monsoon, and it reshapes what a trip here can be.

By September you are getting real gaps between systems, and by October it is a shoulder month that often behaves like the dry season with the occasional soaking. If you want low-season prices without low-season misery, October is where to look.

There are two practical consequences.

Boats. Sailings between the islands get restricted or cancelled outright in bad weather, and inter-island boats are how you get anywhere.

Underwater visibility. Heavy rain stirs the sea up and washes runoff into it, leaving the water murky. That takes the point out of snorkelling, diving, sea walks and glass-bottom boats — the coral is still there, you just cannot see much of it. The murk also lingers past the rain itself, which is why the clearest water comes well into the dry months rather than the moment the weather turns. See scuba diving and coral reefs for how that plays out across the season.

If underwater is the reason you are coming, the wet months are the wrong months — regardless of how cheap they are.

The part that catches people out

Boats can be restricted by rough seas on a day that looks perfectly clear. Sea state and sky are two different things: a distant system produces the swell, the sun is out over your head, and the sailing is still cancelled. Visitors read this as an excuse or bad management. It is neither — it is a decision about a small vessel in a big sea, and it is the right one.

Do not argue with it, and do not book anything that depends on the sailing running.

If you come in the wet

Plenty of people do, and the islands are green, empty and cheap in the low season. Come with the right posture:

Build in slack. Never plan to leave an island the same day you need to catch a flight. Give yourself a buffer day at minimum, and two before an international connection.
Expect changes. Itineraries move, get compressed, get abandoned. Treat the plan as a sketch.
Book refundable where you can, and understand each operator’s cancellation terms before you pay.
Keep spare cash and clothes with you, not in a bag that has gone ahead on a boat you did not board.
Bring patience. Nothing on the ground can be hurried by being annoyed about it, and the people telling you the boat is not running would also rather it were.

The reward is the islands with hardly anyone on them. The price is that the schedule is no longer yours.

The tide moves nearly two metres

The Andamans have a tidal range of about 1.9 m — that is the vertical difference between high and low water. It is not extreme by world standards, but these are shallow, gently shelving beaches, and on a gentle slope a two-metre vertical swing moves the waterline a very long way horizontally.

The consequence is the single most useful thing to understand about an Andaman beach: it is not one place, it is two, and which one you get depends entirely on when you turn up.

At high tide the water comes right up, on some beaches nearly to the treeline. There is little sand left to sit on, but the swimming is good and you can get straight in.
At low tide the sea pulls back to expose a wide flat of sand, rock, coral rubble and tide pools. Excellent for walking and for seeing what lives in the shallows — often useless for swimming, because you will wade a long way before it is deep enough to matter.

Photographs are almost always taken at the flattering end of that cycle, which is why people arrive and feel the beach does not match the picture. Nothing has changed. You are simply there at the other end of the tide.

So check the tide before planning a beach day, particularly if the point of the day is swimming or snorkelling. A tide table for Port Blair is a good enough guide for the nearby islands too.

Island life — who lives here, how the territory is governed, and why haggling works the way it does.
Getting around — autos, scooters, and the private-versus-government ferry decision.
Power, internet and money — rolling blackouts, which SIM to carry, and why UPI beats cash here.
Eating and drinking — late-night food delivery, the 2-litre bottle rule, and the 5 litres of spirits you may fly in.