North Sentinel Island: The Unexplored Land On The Planet

You must have read and heard about the most beautiful places, the most exotic places, and even the scariest places on the earth.

But, how many of you know about the untouched and unexplored place on the planet? You can say that the number of people aware of any such place is just a handful.

North Sentinel Island is one of the islands of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian sub-continent archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. The island is about 60 square kilometers in area and is located at a distance of 60 Km to the west of Port Blair, the capital of Andaman. As per the little information available, there are lush evergreen tropical forests, and the species of Flora and Fauna remain unknown even today.

It is believed that the people living on this island are the direct descendants of the Africans who migrated to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands some 60,000 years ago and have made no significant contact with the outside world ever since.

The tribesmen who live on the island are referred to as The Sentinelese by the civilized world. They speak in a language that is alien to the whole world and is not understandable even by the other native tribes of the Andaman Islands. They are believed to be the last existing humans from the “stone age” and have been living like that ever since. These people are hunters and gatherers with no knowledge of agriculture at all, and thus primarily survive by hunting wild boars, and fishes, eating fruits and seashells and using bows & arrows.

Many expeditions were carried out during the colonial era from 1771 to 1956 to make friendly contact with the Islanders. But failed every time because of the extreme hostility displayed by the native tribesmen, and the expedition teams were attacked with bows and arrows whenever they tried to approach anywhere near the island.

In 1956, the Indian Government implemented a complete ban on travel within 3 nautical miles (5.6Km) of the island and declared it as a tribal reserve to keep the islanders undisturbed. The population of the island remains unknown but 50 to 500 people are believed to live there as per the information shared by the expedition teams.

The most amazing thing about the Sentinelese is that they have been living sustainably in perfect harmony with nature on the island for thousands of years. But there is one peculiar thing about these people, as opposed to the curious nature of human beings, these people are never seen to get off the island to make any kind of exploration voyage even to the nearest islands that are just 36 km away from them.

Now, exploring the most forbidden and isolated place on the earth will be no less than discovering a whole new world and more interesting than any science fiction film ever made.