When you picture the tropical islands of the Indian Ocean, you probably imagine relaxing on a beach in the Maldives, or sipping cocktails in Mauritius.
But there’s one island that’s far less travelled that its counterparts – and for good reason.
If you head east, to the Bay of Bengal, you’ll find North Sentinel Island, which boasts the same clear blue waters and white sand beaches as the popular honeymoon destinations, surrounded by coral reefs teeming with marine life.
But while it sounds idyllic, the archipelago, part of the Andaman Islands, is home to the Sentinelese, dubbed ‘the most dangerous tribe in the world’.
They are one of the few groups of ‘uncontactable’ people left on Earth. Estimates of how many inhabit the island vary wildly, from 15 to 500. And, having had very little contact with anyone outside the tribe, to say they are wary of visitors is an understatement.
Very little is known about the Sentinelese, with their language being incomprehensible to anyone outside of the group – we don’t even know what they call themselves.
But what we do know is that they are incredibly hostile to outsiders. The handful of times people have attempted to make contact have ended very, very badly.
As such, it’s strictly illegal to visit, and there’s an exclusion zone of five nautical miles (9.3 km) surrounding it. If you were to venture there, there’s no telling what fate might befall you.
Where is North Sentinel island?
The nearest mainland countries to the island are Myanmar and Thailand, with Sri Lanka and India – which officially owns the island – to the west.
Until 2018, outsiders had to have a Restricted Area Permit to visit any of the Andamans. Now, visitors can explore 29 inhabited islands and 11 uninhabited islands permit-free.
But, this categorically does not include North Sentinel island, which is about the size of New York’s Manhattan and is protected by the exclusion zone that surrounds it.
Who are the Sentinelese tribe?
According to Survival International, a charity dedicated to working to protect tribal peoples, they have inhabited the islands for up to 60,000 years.
Most of what we know about them has been observed from boats moored some distance away from shore. Crews anchored nearby in the mid-1990s said they saw bonfires on the beach at night time, and the sounds of people singing.
What few photos and videos there are of the tribe show them with primitive weapons such as bows, arrows and javelins, which they use to hunt and gather in the forests on the island. They also fish in narrow canoes.
Women have been seen wearing fibre strings around their waists, necks and heads, while men wear necklaces and headbands with a thicker cover around their waist.
It’s thought they live in two different types of homes: large communal huts with several hearths for a number of families provide communal living, and then there are more temporary shelters with no walls, which can sometimes be seen on the beach, accommodating one family each.
While the Sentinelese are often described as having a culture similar to ‘cavemen’ or people that lived in the ‘Stone Age’, there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Like all societies, it’s likely that their way of life has adapted as time has moved on. We already know that they now use metal tips on their arrows, after the materials were recovered from shipwrecks.
Why can’t you visit
The Sentinelese have made it very clear they want to be left alone.
Since the 1800s, explorers, journalists and even royalty have attempted to make contact – all with varying degrees of success.
Perhaps the closest the outside world has got to making friends was through regular visits by a team of anthropologists led by Trinok Nath Pandit.
The group began visiting the island in 1967 and continued to do so for decades. Pandit and his team would drop gifts off: from a pig, to toys, metal pots and pans and coconuts.
Although the pig got killed and buried, and the toys also laid to rest in the sand, the Sentinelese developed a penchant for coconuts, and seemed to appreciate the pans.
Deliveries of coconuts continued for years, which built trust between the tribe and the anthropologists. Sometimes, the Sentinelese would even wait to meet them on the beach.
However, by 1996, the relationship hadn’t moved much beyond the gifting of coconuts. The tribe never offered for the outsiders to stay, and they never worked out how to communicate with each other. The Indian government then decided to put a stop to the visits.
The next contact made by outsiders was in 2004, after the Boxing Day Tsunami when a helicopter was sent to see if the Sentinelese had been affected, since their island was in the path of the wave.
As it hovered overhead, a member of the tribe ran onto the beach and aimed his arrow at the pilot, proving they were alive and well but wanted no help.
Two years later, the tribe made headlines again when two Indian fishermen, Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari, were killed after their boat broke loose from its mooring while they slept.
More recently, in November 2018, American missionary John Allen Chau then attempted to visit the island in order to convert them to Christianity. The tribe chased him away twice, but on his third attempt, it’s believed he was killed.
The fishermen who had taken Chau near to the island saw tribe members dragging a body along the beach and burying it. Chau wrote in his journal (which was left behind) that he felt the North Sentinel was ‘Satan’s last stronghold’, frustrated he hadn’t had a warm welcome.
Survival International director, Stephen Corry, said the body should not be recovered and that the tribe should be left alone.
Trespassing is also a huge risk to the welfare of the Sentinelese themselves. They have no immunity against many diseases, and could die from even a common cold.
The British and North Sentinel
In 1879, a young Royal Navy officer named Maurice Vidal Portman took charge of the Andaman Islands, and decided set foot on North Sentinel.
Seeing Portman in the distance, the tribe members abandoned their villages, and the British group found the area mostly empty – aside from an elderly couple and four children, who they captured, taking them off the island against their will.
Portman wrote in his records that the islanders ‘sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents.’
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We have no way of knowing exactly what damage this could have done to the rest of the population, but it may very well have started an epidemic on the island, and could explain why the tribe is so wary of outsiders.
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