The forbidden island

North Sentinel Island has been a restricted area since 1996. No one is allowed to enter or even approach the island. Why? It is life-threatening - both for residents and visitors. And this is no exaggeration, as several incidents in the past have shown.

It is actually a real dream island: wide sandy beaches without crowds, tall palm trees that provide shade and turquoise blue sea. North Sentinel Island is located in the Andaman archipelago, around 1500 kilometers east of India. The island itself is just 56 square kilometers in size. Nevertheless, almost every news channel in the world has reported on it. What makes it so interesting are its inhabitants. The Sentinelese are probably the most isolated people in the world.

What is known about the strain

Attempts were made to make contact with them, but this usually backfired badly. But at least some details were found out:

The hunters and gatherers feed on fish, fruit and honey, but also on wild boar.
They kill the animals with bow and arrow.
The inhabitants of the island live in groups of four to five people in huts covered with palm leaves.
They still found warm fireplaces, so they also know how to make a fire.
It is assumed that they migrated from Africa more than 60,000 years ago.

And above all, you know that they want to be left alone.

Unfortunately, this only worked until 1771, when sailors on board an East India Company ship discovered fire on the coast of North Sentinel Island. They reported their discovery, but somehow it was lost. Just like the Nineveh almost a hundred years later. The ship ran aground on one of the coral reefs around the island in 1867. The crew saved themselves on the beach and waited several days to be rescued. Then they were visited by the islanders, who were not happy about the uninvited guests. The natives attacked the ship's crew with volleys of arrows. The stranded people defended themselves as best they could with sticks and stones and were relieved when they were rescued shortly afterwards by a Royal Navy ship.

We kidnap you and you tell everyone how nice we are

The story of the Ninveh quickly made the rounds and in 1880 a British officer was commissioned to check up on the island. Maurice Vidal Portman arrived on North Sentinel Island with a small group of armed men. He had an interesting but ineffective strategy for making contact: he kidnapped six residents (two elderly Sentinelese and four children) to show them that strangers were not evil. The plan was to treat them well and bring them back later. They were supposed to tell the other tribe members how well they had fared with the strangers. That didn't work out. The older ones got sick very quickly and died within a week. Their immune systems couldn't cope with all the unknown germs. The children were then showered with gifts and brought back to the island. Including the foreign germs, which must have triggered an epidemic among the inhabitants.

In 1896, the Sentinelese once again made their position clear that they did not want any contact. On the neighboring island (Great Andaman Island), a dead Indian citizen of Hindu faith was washed up with countless injuries from arrows. According to the British officer in charge, MV Portman, his throat had also been cut.

First contact attempt from India

Almost a century later, in 1971, India decided to initiate the first anthropological study of the islanders. After several years of preparation, the time had finally come. Contact was to be established. Triloknath Pandit, the Indian Minister for Tribal Affairs and anthropologist, set off with 20 others. Also in the proverbial boat were members of the government, scientists and three members of the Onge tribe. The Onge inhabit the nearby Andaman Island. T.N. Pandit hoped that they might be useful as interpreters.

As they approached with their boat, they actually recognized some people on the beach through their binoculars. However, the visitors did not like them and disappeared into the jungle as the boat moved closer and closer to the beach. The researchers entered the island and, in addition to evidence of hunting activities, discovered that the tribe also worked with metal. They also found a small village consisting of 18 huts. However, they never got to see the inhabitants.

Somewhat disappointed by the non-contact visit, Pandit returned to the island a few more times. The Sentinelese were often to be seen on the beach. Sometimes they remained peaceful, but there was also aggressive behavior. When Pandit came to the island in 1974 with a team from National Geographic for a documentary film, the situation escalated. Arrows flew towards the boat and hit a member of the crew. The man was hit in the thigh by a 2.40 meter long projectile. However, the cameraman of the film "Man in Search of Man" recovered from the injury.

Nevertheless, Pandit repeatedly tried to establish a friendly relationship. He deposited gifts in the form of coconuts, iron tools and cooking utensils for the islanders. To match the pots, he once left a live, tied-up pig on the beach. However, this gesture was not understood: The pig was killed with spears and buried in the sand.

A ship's crew experienced the longest eleven days of their lives

At the beginning of August 1981, there was unintentional contact with the islanders. The MV Primrose, a Hong Kong cargo ship with several tons of chicken feed on board, got into trouble in the waters near North Sentinel Island due to a typhoon. They got stuck on a coral reef about a hundred meters off the coast. As with the Nineveh years earlier, there were no problems at first. But on the second day, the inhabitants became aware of the 33-strong crew. The Taiwanese captain Liu Chunglong noticed a large group of armed Sentinelese people getting into canoes to get to the Primrose. However, they failed due to the stormy sea.

Although they immediately sent out an emergency call, it took a full eleven days before the crew were actually rescued by helicopter. US American Robert Fore was the pilot of the rescue team. He remembers that the rescue was difficult: the sea, which was still whipped up by the storm and made it impossible for the islanders to reach them, also made a rescue by rubber dinghy impossible. Even a tugboat sent by the navy had to turn back without having achieved anything. The continuing arrow attacks by the Sentinelese made things even more difficult. In the end, Fore managed to land safely on deck despite the six-meter-high waves lashing against the freighter. In three flights, he brought the entire crew, including the ship's dog, safely to the nearby town of Port Blair. The Primrose is still there, as you can see on Google Earth.

The wreck near the coast was a welcome gift for the islanders. They paddled out in their canoes and took metal from the ship, which they turned into spearheads and tools. According to unconfirmed reports, they also traded some of the Primrose's board for fruit and coconuts with scrap dealers. Despite these trade relations, there were no further contacts.

First friendly contact

Until one woman took it all into her own hands. In early 1991, the Indian anthropologist Madhumala Chattopadhyay put together a team of 13 people. Together with researchers, scientists and other collaborators, she set out to break the ice. Pandit was also part of the team. It was the first time that a scientific crew led by a woman had set foot on the island.

On January 4, she set off on the MV Tarmugli and anchored in the southwestern part of North Sentinel Island. At eight o'clock in the morning, she and the others boarded a small boat and sailed towards the island. As they got closer, they recognized people on the shore, but they were hiding behind trees. Most of them were male, four of them even armed with bows and arrows.

The boat crew began to let the coconuts they had brought with them drift towards the beach. It worked! The islanders came out and waded into the sea to get the presents. As the explorers sent more and more of the goodies, they even organized canoes and homemade baskets to fish them out of the water. Women and children, however, remained at a safe distance from the stand.

More coconuts!

This operation lasted four hours, after which the supply of coconuts was exhausted. As the researchers realized that trust was slowly building up, they fetched supplies from the ship. When the fully loaded boat returned to the island at 2 p.m., the tribe greeted them with shouts of "Nariyali Jaba Jaba". Chattopadhyay recognized an almost extinct Onge dialect: "More and more coconuts"

The tribe members became braver and braver and one young Sentinelese even came through the shallow water to the boat and touched it with his hands. A few others did the same and eventually they took the coconuts directly from the spring. Just at this moment of burgeoning hope, a young tribesman on the beach raised his bow and arrow. He was aiming right at the Indian anthropologist. However, she was not afraid and gestured for him to get a ration of coconuts too. Unimpressed, the shooter drew his bow. Just at that moment, a woman standing nearby gave him a push and the arrow he shot landed ineffectually in the sea. She obviously wanted to protect the patrons from harm. This was the moment when the explorer put all her eggs in one basket. She jumped into the water and handed them the coconuts directly.

Apparently, the Sentinelese saw the female researcher as a sign that the strangers posed no threat. The photos of the tribe members with Chattopadhyay and her team went around the world. This drastically changed the opinion of the islanders. They were previously seen as violent and aggressive, but the pictures of the encounter brought their human side to the fore. A wave of sympathy swept over the Sentinelese. The anthropologist returned to North Sentinel Island 1 1/2 months later with another crew. The tribe remembered her and welcomed her enthusiastically. The inhabitants even climbed into their boat to get some of the coconuts they had brought with them. Not a single arrow was used.

North Sentinel Island becomes a restricted area

Despite this promising success, the Indian government decided in 1996 to prohibit contact with the people. This decision was made in order to protect the people from dangerous diseases and to ensure that their cultural development was not affected. An exclusion zone of five nautical miles was established around North Sentinel Island. This is monitored by regular coastguard patrols.

When an Indian government helicopter circled low over the island in 2004, the successes of Chattopadhyay and her team were forgotten. The Sentinelese tried to shoot down the iron bird with a bow and arrow. At the time, the crew wanted to find out whether the tribe had survived the recent tsunami well.

The people find no peace

Two years later, two Indians, Sunder Raj (48) and Pandit Tiwari (52), came too close to the island. The two fishermen paid for this with their lives. There are different accounts of the reason for their forbidden excursion across the exclusion zone. While some sources say they were illegally collecting mud crabs, others speculate that the two were drunk on palm wine and their boat drifted to the island while they were asleep. When the two men failed to return home in January 2006, an Indian Coast Guard helicopter set out to search for them. The crew saw the dead bodies lying on the beach of Sentinel Island. However, the men could not be recovered as the tribe attacked the search party with arrows.

Probably the most sensational contact took place in 2018. A 26-year-old US-American felt called to convert the inhabitants of what he considered the "last bastion of Satan" to the Christian faith. John Allen Chau bribed two fishermen with a good 350 dollars (25,000 rupees) to help him get to the closed-off island. He made his first attempt in November 2018: the fishermen brought him to the island, but he was greeted with a volley of arrows on his arrival. According to some sources, one arrow hit him in the chest, but it was intercepted by the Bible he had brought with him.

Anyone who thinks that this experience has made him rethink his plan is mistaken. Chau made one more trip to the island, again without official permission, of course. However, this visit by the young Protestant missionary in mid-November was his last. He was killed by the arrows. His smugglers observed everything and reported the details to the Indian authorities. Among other things, the Sentinelese transported his dead body from the rubber dinghy to the beach.

Travel influencer sets foot on North Sentinel Island

Only recently, 24-year-old Viktor Polyakov was lucky when he visited the island. In April 2025, he took a boat to the island and tried to draw attention to himself with a whistle. According to his own statements, however, he had no contact with the tribe. He drove to the beach, shot a short video, dropped off a coconut and a can of Coke !!! as a gift and drove off again.

All these incidents have contributed to the fact that the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island are seen as "wild, aggressive and bloodthirsty". Only someone who has had contact with the tribe can judge whether this is really the case. Let's leave the last word to Triloknath Pandit, who has visited the Sentinelese several times. In his experience, the inhabitants are peace-loving and their bad, frightening reputation is not justified. "We are the aggressors. We are invading their territory," he explains. And adds: "We should respect their wish to be left alone."