Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Colonial prison island now protecting Earth's last uncontacted tribe while developing controlled tourism
The Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island have killed every outsider who approached their shores for at least 60,000 years—including an American missionary in 2018—making them humanity's most persistent practitioners of isolation. Their home sits 1,200 kilometers from mainland India, in an archipelago that contains both India's last uncontacted tribe and its only tri-service military command capable of projecting power into the Malacca Strait.
The British established a penal colony here in 1858, and between 1896 and 1906 constructed the Cellular Jail—a panopticon of seven wings designed to break Indian independence fighters through solitary confinement. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Batukeshwar Dutt, and hundreds of others endured forced labor and torture in cells that looked out on the Bay of Bengal but allowed no communication with neighboring prisoners.
The 2004 tsunami devastated these islands with an intensity that permanently reshaped their geography. Of India's 12,405 tsunami deaths, 3,513 occurred here. The Car Nicobar Air Force base lost 122 personnel and their families. Trinket Island was split in two. Indira Point, the southernmost tip of India, subsided 4.25 meters. The Sentinelese, by contrast, retreated to high ground and survived intact—their refusal of outside contact providing the adaptation that saved them.
Today the islands serve as India's eastern anchor. The Andaman and Nicobar Command, established in 2001, is India's only integrated tri-service theater command, and its strategic significance has grown as China expands through the Indian Ocean. The territory sits 150 kilometers from Indonesia, closer to Southeast Asia than to any Indian city.
Tourism remains the primary civilian economy, though access to tribal reserves is strictly prohibited. Beyond protected areas, the islands offer diving, beaches, and—at the Cellular Jail—a light-and-sound show that narrates independence history to 100,000+ annual visitors.
By 2026, Andaman and Nicobar's dual identity intensifies: as India's strategic forward position in a contested ocean, and as the refuge of peoples who have successfully resisted every form of contact the modern world has attempted to impose.