Andaman Islands feel the tides of change

At the ends of the Earth there are prisons. Colonial powers liked to terrorise unwilling subjects in the most far-flung of places: Devil’s Island in French Guiana, say, or Cape Verde’s Tarrafal, or Australia.

Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is another example. Its Cellular Jail is a panopticon on the Jeremy Bentham model, and housed agitators for Indian independence. The jailer, David Barry, would greet new inmates with the words: “While you are here, I am your God.”

I stand on the roof of the dark Victorian building and gaze out over the sea, absorbed by the dense green of one of the archipelago’s 572 islands. I am 300km from the coast of Myanmar and 1,400km from the Indian mainland.

Marco Polo claimed there were cannibals here. And last year John Allen Chau, an American missionary, was killed by the arrows of the Sentinelese, a tribe that chooses to remain isolated. This is a place with a hard history, where the sun fights through humid air.

But time being what it is, what was once a Victorian’s terrifying exile is now a boomer’s blissful solitude. Having been rightfully shamed by our colonial legacy — “This is where the Britishers hanged people,” says the guide from my tour company Yonder — we head for the ferry. A catamaran carries us the hour and a half between Port Blair and what was, until December last year, Havelock Island, but is now renamed Swaraj Dweep. We pull in past mangrove, fantail palm, ash and soaring almonds.

Buphi, a driver from my hotel, Barefoot at Havelock, throws my bag in his jeep and we speed along a single track road, past banana plantations and palm-thatched houses with yards full of betel nuts drying in the sun. Within 20 minutes, we are outside Barefoot’s wood-built reception in the trees.

Sanjeev Kumar, the manager, welcomes me and, after offering me a fresh coconut, takes me along a path through a stand of mahua, 100ft trunks fireworking into a rich green canopy. The falling sun throws the trees’ stately shadows across the empty forest floor so that the roots look like snakes.

We emerge on to a beach curving away in a perfect crescent of golden sand where rollers froth at the interruption. Radhanagar, named for the principal consort of Krishna (he had 1,600), has been repeatedly listed as one of the greatest beaches in the world.

I’m teasing Sanjeev, saying that Barefoot at Swaraj Dweep doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Barefoot at Havelock. “It loosely translates as Freedom Island, which isn’t so bad,” he says. He points across to what was Neill Island and says the hotels there are having a tougher time: “It is now called Shaheed, or Martyr Island.”

The Indian president Narendra Modi wants to sweep away the names of the British past, which seems understandable. But he is also fundamentally changing the islands. The Andaman and Nicobars, summits of the Arakam chain of submarine mountains, are strategically hugely important, and run under the direct authority of a lieutenant governor.

“The Modi government means business,” Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle, will later tell me. While some of the administration’s top-down rules are welcome — having spent a day in Chennai, Modi’s Clean India Campaign seems to be having a remarkable effect — others can be frustrating. My plans to dive some of Andamans’ famous spots, kayak in the nighttime phosphorescence and take a small boat to a far-flung fishing spot, are all shelved on the say-so of the authorities as they attempt to bring regulatory order to this wild place. Sophisticated operators such as Barefoot are being caught out by sudden rule changes, and feel they are not being listened to.

The sun drops below the horizon, setting fire to the clouds, so Sanjeev and I turn and walk back through the spooky wood. Barefoot, with its 31 cottages and tents, summons up memories of backpacking, but without the discomforts. My stilted lodge might need a bit of love — the loo gets stuck and I get a small shock from the bedside light — but the room is big, made of smooth, soft woods, the water is hot, it’s blessedly free of mosquitoes and sand flies, and is very clean. Best of all — well, besides the beach — the staff couldn’t be more charming and, within the eccentricities of the government rules, are able to organise anything.

David Decouroy, Barefoot’s fishing guide, pilots me north in his small boat, the Surmai, and we slip between three islands still clinging to their Raj names, Henry Lawrence, Outram and Inglis. He points out Strait island to the west, the adopted home to the Great Andamanese, one of the eight indigenous groups on the islands.

Less successful in protecting themselves than the Sentinelese, the Great Andamanese numbered an estimated 3,500 when the British set up camp in 1857. They fought and lost the one-sided Battle of Aberdeen two years later, and then measles and syphilis halved the population. Now they number just over 50, most of them mixed race.

The elephants are said now to be able to move between some of the islands, using their trunks as snorkels

In a few years, the north of the Andamans is expected to open to tourism, far beyond the few backpacker retreats that currently exist. Port Blair’s airport is being expanded to take international flights and another airport is being renovated in the northern town of Diglipur. Everybody I speak to is securing land in prime spots.

I wanted to take the government ferry north from Havelock to Rangat, and then a car north to Ross and Smith islands, where a reportedly exquisite sand causeway emerges at low tide. The trouble is that the roads are terrible. The 300km from the capital to Diglipur takes up to 14 hours.

Part of that journey is through Jalawa country, where those tribespeople wait at the side of the road to stop the cars, asking for cigarettes and other goodies. The government has ruled that all vehicles must travel in convoys to stop this, while pushing forward with improvements to the roads, to the concern of those fighting for indigenous rights.

“They are going fast without understanding what the islands are, and what they need,” says Denis Giles, the editor.

So I content myself with gazing into the dense forests of the islands from the Surmai. I am looking for one of the spotted deer the British introduced, or a big monitor lizard crashing along the shore. What I’d truly love to see is an elephant. The forest service once used them to move timber, teaching them to swim. Now they are said to roam the beaches and be able to move between some of the islands, using their trunks as snorkels.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the archipelago are the Nicobars, to the south. They are home to the Nicobari, and are again off limits — although there is talk of several islands there opening up too. It’s tricky though, as the islands are host to vast Indian military bases, aimed at protecting the global shipping lanes through the Strait of Malacca.

I spend a lot of time trying to find people who have been, because even Andaman islanders have to get permission. Finally I track down G Shaktivel, a naturalist and birdwatching guide, who as a government marine biologist dived around more than 200 of the islands.

He says that while Swaraj Dweep’s shallower reefs have bleached due to El Niño, cyclones and global warming, the Nicobars remain “in a very good state.” Both Shaktivel and Denis Giles describe the southern islands as a paradise.

Denis tells the story of joining in a Nicobarese festival: “It was an ossuary feast for the first queen, Islon. People came from everywhere with gifts. They dug up her grave and took out the bones, cleaned and polished them, tied them together and sat her on a chair. There were hours and hours of dancing, eating, and a continuous supply of toddy. Even when I slept I heard the thump, thump, thump of drums.”

After three nights at Barefoot, I move to Jalakara, the creation of a Brit, Marko Hill and his wife, Atalanta Weller, a former shoe designer. Nestled under Swaraj Dweep’s highest hill, it’s as beautiful a spot as it’s possible to imagine on a jungly slope overlooking the Bay of Bengal. A grand staircase ascends from the base of a giant raintree to the bar and infinity pool and then on into a network of seven beautifully designed rooms.

They are all unique. There is the fabulous garden suite where all life — laughter, sleep, bathing, sex and eating — is possible outside and in total seclusion. “Honeymooners love it,” says Naz Alan, the manager. “They often don’t leave, day or night.” The real honeymoon suite is set on its own around a plunge pool fed by a whispering fountain.

The tower room, quite famous now, has its bed set on a dais in the middle of four walls of picture windows, privacy maintained because it is the highest room, hotel or residential, on the island. It would be Instagram-perfect, if there was WiFi. “We want people to talk to each other,” said Naz. “We did have WiFi for a while but everyone sat looking at their phones as the sun went down.”

Kirti Kalyandurgmath, Jalakara’s in-house adventure specialist, takes me (day) kayaking among the mangroves, pointing out an Andaman dove and a serpent eagle. On another morning he takes me to a secret beach, down a thick jungle path, pointing out skink lizards as they slink away through the bushes.

Naz takes me to visit his friends Ravi and Sanita Mridha, part of the Bangladeshi population brought in by Indira Gandhi’s government during the 1971 civil war, a group that now make up the vast majority of the islands’ 380,000-strong population. They prepare lunch in their quiet paradisal farm, asking me to help peel the banana flowers.

Naz passes with a chicken and, foreseeing murder, I shout for him not to kill it. I’m too late. After a while he returns with the carcass, plucked and chopped up. “Rest in pieces,” he says.

“Do your guests like this?” I ask. “They seem quite hippyish.” Naz scoffs and replies: “I get guests who want to kill the chicken.” The curry is incredible, despite the early notes of guilt.

When I finally have to leave, my plane rises from Port Blair, and tracks a route towards Chennai that crosses North Sentinel. The island sits bruised and square in the waters of the Bay of Bengal.

Survival International describes the Sentinelese as the world’s most isolated tribe. I gaze down, imagining them watching me pass overhead, wondering what they are thinking.

Their forest is thick until it breaks on the beach where John Allen Chau was killed, just like two local fishermen a few years before. My guess — although of course I don’t know — is that they know perfectly well what’s going on but, scarred by some earlier experience of the outside world, they want nothing to do with us.

Behind me is Port Blair’s airport, a hive of construction. New hotels, few as good as Jalakara, are opening up, and perhaps on the Nicobars too. The number of planes flying over the heads of the Sentinelese is only going to increase. Modi means business. They’re going to need to keep their wits sharp.

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