A traveler’s look at the North Sentinel Island while on the return flight from Port Blair, South Andaman.

North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands; seems to be a number of them in this area. It is an Indian archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, which includes South Sentinel Island.

It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous people in voluntary isolation who have defended, often by force, their protected isolation from the outside world for ages.

There are laws and order in place in order to protect the remaining tribal community from “mainland” infectious diseases against which they (likely) have no acquired immunity. The area is patrolled by the Indian Navy today.

The good part is that Indian authorities recognize the islanders’ desire to be left alone. At that, they restrict outsiders to remote monitoring (by boat and sometimes air) from a reasonably safe distance.

However, the Indian government will not prosecute the Sentinelese for killing people in the event that an outsider ventures ashore.

This island is a protected area of India.