Neil Island

Natural Bridge · low tide only

Neil Island — Shaheed Dweep — is Havelock's quieter cousin: a single square kilometre you can cycle across in twenty minutes, ringed by four named beaches and a farming village in the middle that still supplies most of the archipelago's vegetables.

The pace here is the point. Mornings at Bharatpur Beach for shallow coral snorkelling, an afternoon cycling past banana plantations, and evenings at Laxmanpur Beach watching the sun drop behind the Natural Bridge — a coral rock arch that only shows itself at low tide.