Paradise Found or Paradise Lost? A Trip to the Andaman Islands by Fiona Dunlop
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Ptolemy, the Roman geographer, may have charted them way back in the 2nd century, but until recently the Andaman’s were pretty much off the radar. Scattered seductively over the turquoise depths of the Bay of Bengal, the 204 islands are a two-hour flight from Madras or Calcutta – although they are actually much closer to Burma and Thailand. Fabulously pristine, densely forested with vast tracts of mangrove, and edged by blinding white beaches, they are the stuff tourist brochures are made of. Few archipelagos are so alluring, and this naturalists’ haven could well become the big eco-destination of the Indian Ocean.
Extensive Coral Reefs
It used to be, before alerted by an enraptured Jacques Cousteau, divers who went to the Andaman’s to revel in the extensive coral reefs and underwater life. But the 2004 tsunami shot the islands into the headlines, initially with wild stories of being washed away and then of massive casualties. Luckily they escaped the worst, suffering mainly from the earthquake, although nearly 20,000 people died in the Nicobar Islands (an adjoining archipelago to the south, off-limits to non-Indians) which bore the brunt of the wave. Massive aid poured in, including a surfeit of new fishing-boats, which rapidly became pleasure-boats and a container load of teddy bears. But that’s another story.
Another result of this world exposure was to bring attention to the ‘Stone Age’ people of the Andaman’s after they were filmed firing arrows at helicopters bringing food and water. Suddenly TV-viewers everywhere were witnessing what seemed like a scene from prehistory – live on screen!
Tropical Forest
For untold centuries these hunter-gatherers had thrived on the abundant resources of the tropical forest and the ocean, bartering produce between islands, before tribal numbers dwindled massively due to imported disease. Today only several hundred remain out of a total population of 350,000 divided between 36 islands. The four tribes include the Sentinelese, who shun all contact, and 250 or so arrow-toting Jarawas in a reserve on South Andaman Island.
Immigration to the islands kicked off in the 1850s when the British Raj established a penal colony at Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and brought in the Karen’s from Burma and the Ranchi’s from northern India as labour. These communities are still intact and if you join a camping trip around the islands, your camp-assistants will be quiet, diminutive people who cook up fantastic fare and strike camp in minutes. After the 1947 partition, a huge influx of Bengalis were given land and they now form the backbone of the farming population together with Tamils.
Natural Beauty
There is a strong sense of a place on the cusp. With astounding natural beauty, remoteness, a breezy tropical climate, captivating wildlife above and below water and welcoming locals (apart from those Jarawa), there is endless scope for Robinson Crusoe-style activities. The Indian Government which owns most of the land has identified four sites for ‘eco-friendly’ development: Havelock Island Beach no. 7; Neil Island; Diglipur, and the idyllic Lalaji Bay on Long Island, where for the moment only bullocks take leisurely morning swims.
Natural riches include ferns, orchids and towering hardwoods such as sea maua, termite-resistant padauk, the massive, knife-thin buttress-trunks of the garjan, as well as the softwood papian. Five species of turtles as well as the elusive dugong swim in the crystalline waters, and a myriad of tropical fish flit around the coral reefs. For divers, it’s paradise. For kayakers too, who glide along narrow channels through the mangroves, dodging salt-water crocodiles.
Warbles of Exoctic Birds
On land you can be deafened by the whoops and warbles of exotic birds and then spot clouds of vivid butterflies (half of the 300 or so species are endemic) dancing in the shadows of the jungle. It feels like a latter day Eden, but perfection always has a price and in this case it’s the voracious sand-flies and, once a year, the ‘night of the giant centipedes’: a tropical horror-movie.
Tasneem Kahn, an enthusiastic young naturalist compiling a book on Andaman wildlife, describes this to me before swiftly changing subjects to the environmental effects of the tsunami. “The pressure of the water actually tilted some of the islands, letting salt-water flow into the tree roots. That’s why you see stretches of dead forest along some seashores and flooded areas. Coastal mangroves were also uprooted and will take years to recover.” In fact some landscapes just half an hour from the capital Port Blair, still look apocalyptic, their flooded paddy-fields strewn with dead tree-trunks in a kind of frozen monochrome.
Trunk Road
A major handicap to development has always been access. The forests are dense and sea-routes lengthy. Diglipur, one of the places earmarked for development, lies in the far north. Reaching it by land involves an 11-hour drive up the Andaman Trunk Road from Port Blair. Controversially this new highway slices straight through Jarawa reserves. The Indian Supreme Court once actually ordered its closure, but since then traffic has more than tripled.
According to Survival International, which campaigns to protect tribal people, the danger is that the highway brings illegal settlers, loggers and poachers. For the last surviving Jarawa, this means exposure to alcohol, disease, sexual abuse and, inevitably, tourist exploitation. Taxi-drivers and hoteliers from Port Blair have already been accused of organising ‘Jarawa-spotting’ expeditions, which have understandably motivated more arrows.
“There’s a police checkpoint at each end of the road and sometimes the bus has an armed escort” relates Umeed Mistry, a local dive-instructor who recently travelled up the trunk road. ”By law vehicles are not allowed to stop, but some do and the Jarawa can be aggressive. My bus-driver showed me an old arrow wound in his chest.” Despite attempts to protect them, it seems there is a tragic inevitability, and gradually younger Jarawa are going down to Port Blair where they adopt local habits, jeans and T-shirts being the first. Meanwhile their elders cling to body-paint and shell ornaments.
Beach Hut Hotel
Until now, tourism has been concentrated on Havelock Island where Susheel Dixit of the Barefoot Group set up a beach hut hotel in an abandoned banana-grove. “I wanted to set an example when I built the first bamboo cottages on stilts, and it’s mostly worked – look at the backpacker places,” enthuses the Port Blair-born entrepreneur. After gaining five business partners and an international reputation, Dixit’s outlook is looking rosy. “It took time to pick up after the tsunami but things are now going well. What’s helped has been the increased competition of flights from the mainland. Until the tsunami they were prohibitively expensive – now they’re reasonable.”
Cheaper access has also resulted in new backpacker hut-hotels on the other side of the island from Barefoot, although nothing changes the four hour trip by public ferry from the airport. Susheel’s Barefoot resort is decidedly more sophisticated, attracts a well-heeled, cosmopolitan clientele and claims serious environmental commitment: 90% of the staff are locals, it is self-sufficient in water, most food comes from the local market, there is ongoing planting of endemic trees and air-conditioning in some cottages is being phased out. When a Barefoot camping trip to an uninhabited island moves on, not a beer-cap remains.
Swimming Elephants
Inadvertently, Barefoot has also helped propagate the myth of the swimming elephants. A few years ago, photos appeared in the world press of elephants paddling underwater, allegedly using trunks as snorkels. Word was out that these creatures lived on Beach no. 7. The truth is that there was only ever one aquatic celebrity here, and 58-year old Rajan, who lives at Barefoot, now prefers a quiet amble along the beach to practising his swimming skills.
However, there is a bigger historic picture. Until not long ago, elephants employed in logging had to swim between islands and jobs. When logging was banned, they became redundant, and most now run wild on the uninhabited Interview Island. Their plight, like so much of the Andaman’s, is food for endless debate among environmentalists. Luckily, Havelock also has an Elephant Camp where (and this is no myth) four residents learn to play football, amongst other tricks.
Will new hotel projects threaten the island’s delicate balance? Even if a Bengali driver tells me, “people here like tourists as they make business better”, that is for now with roughly 300 visitors a month. Most of Havelock’s 7,000 inhabitants are farmers and their bucolic paddy-fields, goats and vegetable patches are a world apart from the chilled beach life of the backpackers and divers. You wonder where exactly the tipping-point will be, as has happened on so many Thai islands.
Asia's Most Beautiful Beach
The much hyped Beach no. 7 still lives up to Time Magazine’s one time epithet as ‘Asia’s most beautiful beach’. It is indeed magnificent, a blissful 2km sweep of powdery white sand ending at a thickly forested headland, with a constant roll of waves fronting aquamarine stillness. The odd dunghi (that’s dinghy in Andaman-speak) chugs past, a flashy yacht from Phuket comes to anchor, coconut-sellers hack their fruit open for a few rupees and ladies in brilliant silk saris laughingly dip their toes in the water. “No one had heard of the Andaman’s before the tsunami, so in some ways the cloud had a silver lining” reflects Susheel.
But, what about the Jarawa? And then consider those Andamanese who no longer make a living from logging. For them, tourism is the only option. Paradise Found or Paradise Lost?
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