The Andaman Island Chain
Since August 1st, the Andaman island chain has been back to what it was for many millennia - largely isolated.
Because the authorities imposed a lockdown on the 204 islands of the Indian Union Territory, which also includes the Nicobar Islands.
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So far, not even 400 of the approximately 400,000 islanders have tested positive for Covid-19.
But the complete shutdown of public life is also taking into account the indigenous population, which numbered only a few hundred people: When the Andamans became part of India in 1947, one of five tribes was extinct, a second consisted of only a few women.
Introduced epidemics had decimated the indigenous peoples, in less than 100 years since the British occupation began.
The Jarawa, Onge, and Sentinelese survived, but only because they avoided Port Blair and the surrounding islands.
There, in the south of the Andaman Islands, the colonial rulers founded a penal colony for insurgents from India in 1858.
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The Indian government has now accepted that peace and seclusion are the best protection for indigenous peoples, and it has declared some islands and forest areas to be reserves.
Tourism experts like to describe the Andamans as "the last white spots on the world map".
That's right about the indigenous areas.
For example, it is forbidden to approach North Sentinel Island within three miles.
This even applies to scientists, which is why almost nothing is known about the Sentinelese to this day.
Native Americans kill US citizens
He entered her island to convert her to Christianity.
A US citizen wanted to convert a so-called uncontacted people, the Sentinelese, and was killed by them.
Now the indigenous people are under observation.
Source: WORLD / Alina Quast
The three main Andaman islands, on the other hand, are no longer untouched.
The influx of tens of thousands of Indians has changed the Andaman Islands, which are located in the Bay of Bengal about 1000 kilometers from the motherland.
New villages and fields emerged, and recently more and more hotel complexes, which shrank the tropical rainforest by a third.
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The underwater world, however, is as rich in species as it has been since the beginning of time - because of it, more and more Indians from the subcontinent are now coming to the Andamans as tourists, they want to watch fish on the seawalk: with an air hose on their helmets they run over the seabed at a depth of eight meters.
Nobody needs a diving license.
And German tourists?
They are mostly backpackers and enjoy the sunsets.
Source: Infographic Die Welt
Soup with bird nests from India
They are considered white gold on the Andamans: the nests of the salangans.
A pair of birds needs more than a month to produce a web of spit that is only a few grams light and yet surprisingly strong.
Many Chinese appreciate the crescent-shaped saliva bowls, which harden quickly in the air, as a soup base.
The fact that they are willing to pay thousands of euros per kilo for this is due to the belief that the protein bombs could fuel the libido.
If you want to try the bird's nest soup: Chinese restaurants in Port Blair offer it.
Salangan nests consist only of saliva, but are surprisingly robust
Source: pa / imageBROKER / Wothe, K.
Vacationers do "photo hunt" for indigenous people
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In 2013 Survival International's patience was over: The human rights organization, which campaigns for indigenous peoples, called for a boycott of tourism on the Andaman Trunk Road worldwide.
The trunk road connects hundreds of villages between Port Blair and Diglipur.
Because it crosses the Jarawa reserve, a kind of street safari developed on the route in which tourists “photo hunt” the indigenous people.
But the call was hardly successful - tourists are still driving the jungle road.
In the meantime, however, local authorities are also appealing to travelers to take the “pleasant sea route to the north”.
The reason: Young Jarawas have got used to alms from tourists and demand it, sometimes with threatening gestures, as a "road toll".
Have adapted to the tourists: Jarawa in the Andaman Islands
Source: LightRocket via Getty Images / Thierry Falise
A unique place for turtles
Three rare species of turtles use the same beach, 17 kilometers east of Diglipur on North Andaman, for brood care: Kalipur Beach is the only place in the world where leatherback turtles, hawksbill sea turtles and olive ridged turtles lay their eggs between December and March.
The animals enjoy special protection under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.
The turtle eggs are collected and placed in guarded clutches to protect them from nest robbers.
Volunteers can help with this and with releasing the hatched turtles into the sea.
Elephants as a taxi in the sea
Pachyderms are excellent swimming, and there are indeed elephants on the Andaman Islands, who act as animal taxi boats to carry locals through the straits.
They are the last of those working elephants who once had to help clear the forests by swimming from island to island.
Logging has been banned in the archipelago since 2001, and most of the elephants made their way home to mainland India.
Those who stayed became a temple servant or a tourist attraction, like the bull elephant Rajan, who accompanied the guests of the resort "The Barefoot" on Havelock Island to snorkel.
In 2016 he died of old age.
An elephant swimming off the Andaman coast
Source: Getty Images
Fought against the British with Mahatma Ghandi
He fought at Gandhi's side against the British and in 1943 proclaimed the government-in-exile Free India in the Andaman Islands: Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945).
The fact that he was supported by Nazi Germany and Japan is still controversial in India today.
Nevertheless, Ross Island, once the administrative seat of the British, was given Bose's name in 2018.
A dreamy beach with pitfalls
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Around 500,000 tourists traveled to the Andaman Islands in 2019, and the majority of them visited Radhanagar Beach on Havelock Island.
Its reputation as “Asia's Best Beach” goes back to a 2004 report in the “Time” magazine and found new nourishment with the “Taj Exotica” hotel, which opened in 2018.
But the dream beach also has its pitfalls.
Thanks to various protective measures, the number of saltwater crocodiles on the Andaman Islands rose from around 30 in the 1970s to around 500 today.
There are more and more attacks on people, some of them are fatal.
One of the victims was a tourist who died on Havelock Island.
Looks idyllic, but is not entirely harmless: Radhanagar Beach on Havelock Island
Source: Getty Images
The quote
"His wild expression could bring a man to sleep"
Sir Conan Doyle characterized the natives of the Andamans as cannibal villains in the Sherlock Holmes novel "The Sign of the Four" (1890).
Doyle was never on the islands and didn't know any native.
The same was true of Marco Polo;
500 years before Doyle, the world traveler was the first European to report what he knew from hearsay about the archipelago - and that sounded consistently daunting.
Perhaps it was such “negative headlines” that saved the Andamans from conquerors until the 19th century.
This article was first published in August 2020.
Quirky, record-breaking, typical: you can find more parts of our regional geography series here.
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Source: Welt am Sonntag