Islands are usually considered our go-to choice when the vacation season kicks in. However, there is one island in the Bay of Bengal which you definitely should avoid visiting. It is a tropical island forming a portion of the Andaman Islands called the North Sentinel Island.
The Sentinelese are a group of people who have lived on North Sentinel Island for approximately over 60,000 years. However, the fact that these tribes do not like outsiders trespassing on their island are just terrifying due to its deadly consequences.
If that happens, worst case scenario – you’ll be killed and buried by the tribe over there.
The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers who are related to other indigenous groups in India’s Bay of Bengal, such as the Onge and Jarawa. They most likely hunt terrestrial wildlife with bows and arrows and catch local seafood with more primitive methods like mud crabs and molluscan shells.
Some of their practices date back to the Stone Age, and they are not known to practice agriculture.
North Sentinel Island has an estimated population of 80 to 150 people, though it could be as high as 500 or as low as 15. They are all not only very reclusive, but they are also the one tribe that has remained ‘uncontacted’ by the rest of the world in the last 200 years.
In 2006, they expressed their strong rejection to foreign contact by killing two Indian fishermen who accidentally went too close to the island in their boat, while hunting for mud crabs.
That isn’t the only aversion they’ve displayed; there have been other instances where they’ve shown a reluctance to connect with the outside world.
Also, no one outside North Sentinel Island knows the Sentinelese language; anthropologists usually refer to people by their own names, but no one outside North Sentinel Island knows what the Sentinelese call themselves, let alone how to greet them or ask about their views on the world and their role in it.
As a result, the Indian government authorities have recognised and accepted that the Sentinelese tribe wishes to remain isolated from the rest of the world and that their wishes should be respected. In 1956, India’s government was content to merely monitor the island from afar.
Going within 3 nautical miles (5.6 kilometres) of the island or attempting to make contact with the residents has been declared illegal.
It is a self-governing territory under Indian protection, and possibly the only place on the planet that has fled the effects of modern civilisation.
It’s intriguing to realise how much of the world remains unexplored. Imagining their lives, which are still uncivilised, invokes a lot of questions in our minds.
