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Sentinel Island, World’s most inaccessible place!

North Sentinel Island


Interesting? Well, I am talking about North Sentinel Island. North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. It lies to the west of the southern part of South Andaman Island. No need to panic if you have plans to visit Andaman Islands for your honeymoon, since this island is one among the 100 island groups of Andaman.

The Sentinelese

The usual tribes of Andaman Islands , The Sentinelese is almost similar to this group of tribes

A group of tribes, the Sentinelese are the indigenous people lives on the North Sentinel Island. They are living
there peacefully by managing with fishing and hunting animals. Most of the island is forested but they can offer very good climate for them. They don’t want strangers to trespass into their territory.

Studies are showing, Island have human presence for more than 60 thousand years. The population of the tribes is estimated between to 50 to 500 individuals. The Sentinelese deny any contact with the outside world, and are among the last people to remain virtually untouched by modern civilization.

Still their communication language, culture and food is a mystery for the researchers. Coconut trees and banana trees are very common everywhere in Andaman Islands, but it is not present in Sentinel Island. Whatever information had collected so far were with the help of NASA satellites only.

The Isolated Island, Sentinel

North Sentinel Island Andaman Nicobar
The North Sentinel Island of Andaman Nicobar

Since 1947, India has administered the island as part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory. However, because there has never been any treaty with the people of the island, nor any record of a physical occupation whereby the people of the island have conceded sovereignty, the island exists in a curious state of limbo under established international law and can be seen as a sovereign entity under Indian protection.

The Indian government has strictly prohibited fishing near to this Island considering the potential hazards. There are incidents which reported the demise of fisher man near to this isolated island. Indian government and navy have tried their best to help them out but all were epic failures.

Some history of Sentinel Island

Toward the end of the 1867 summer monsoon season, the Nineveh, an Indian merchant ship, was wrecked on a reef near the island. The 106 surviving passengers and crewmen landed on the beach in the ship’s boat and fended off attacks by the Sentinelese. Now you might have understood the complete picture of the cover image of this post.

Survey agencies have been reported about a war between the Sentinelese and couple of them have died in that war. Good that it was a bow & arrow war, else this tribes would have been history.

The earth quake happened in 2004 damaged the island however they didn’t allow any rescue operations from the government side.

sentinel-island tribes
A photo attempt from safe distance

The Andaman and Nicobar Administration has stated in 2005 that they have no intention to interfere with the lifestyle or habitat of the Sentinelese and are not interested in pursuing any further contact with them

As of now the tribes are facing potential threats of infectious diseases to which they have no immunity, as well as violence from intruders. For the Sentinelese island is their world. They don’t know anything outside of that island or not interested in knowing also.

This story would have been so surprising for people like us who can never survive an hour without internet and mobile phones.

A land of humans where humans are not allowed!

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