Free Republic

Indian police said on Thursday they had arrested a U.S. tourist who sneaked onto a highly restricted island carrying a coconut and a can of Diet Coke to a tribe untouched by the modern world. The incident occurred seven years after another American was killed by the tribe on the same island. Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel — part of India's Andaman Islands — in a bid to meet the Sentinelese people, who are believed to number only around 150. All outsiders, Indians and foreigners alike, are banned from traveling within three...

TN Pandit was the first anthropologist to enter the isolated Andaman island of North Sentinel, back in 1967. He says he was surprised when he heard that an American evangelist, John Allen Chau, had been killed by the Sentinelese. Speaking to ET at his residence in New Delhi, 83-year-old Pandit narrated his experiences of interacting with the Sentinelese, among the few remaining isolated tribes in the world. The tribe is not hostile, nor do they raid their neighbours, Pandit says.They only say, ‘leave us alone.’ They make it amply clear that outsiders are not welcome in their habitat. One needs...