"The land of the head-hunters" was how Marco Polo, the first western visitor,
used to call the Andaman and Nicobar islands, an archipelag of 572 islands lost in the middle
of the indian ocean. More precisely in the Bay of Bengal, between the indian peninsula to the
west and Burma to the north and east.
With only 36 inhabited islands, this region is a mass of dense
forest with endles varieties of exitic plants and birds.
Thick, tropical forests cloak the hilly terrain and the meandering,
sandy beaches are fringed with coconut palms, swaying to the rythm
of the monsoon
The name of the Andamans Islands is acient. The theory that became
prevalent is that it derives from Andoman, the Malay form of Hanuman,
the sanskrit name of the indian Monkey-God
There are many storys and legends about these chain of island,
Marco Polo describes the native of the islands as "heaving heads
like dogs" and immidiatly add that they were cannibals.
Another Italian traveler, Niccolo' de' Conti (c.1440) mentioned
the islands and said that the names means "island of gold",
probabily referring at some hidden tresure.
Pigmy tribes from the Stone Age (Onge, Jarawa, Sentinelese...)
are the reclusive aboriginal people that were here first and still
are, living in inpenetrable jungles, hunting wild boar and dear,
and still practising age old rituals including some cannibalism.
This untuched paradise was annexed by the British as part of India
in the 19th century and then used to dump Indian convicts sentenced
to life imprisonment or to death.
Most Andaman waves are fairly easy with good shapes and fantastic
colours on the reef below.
The "acceses", on the other hand, are very difficolt, getting to the waves can be a real adventure, and some spot are practically impossible to reach without a boat,
remember that these island are wild, mind the sea croc and potentially hostile tribes
Little Andaman is the most southern island on wich you can go, further south the Nicobar island are off limits, protecting their surf potential and their unique indigenous
population from outside interference.
in 1994 Pongpol wrote a book called The Pirates of Tarutao, based on actual events that happened in the penal colony during the Second World War.
In the 1930s, the Thai government used the Andaman island of Tarutao as a prison to incarcerate the country’s most undesirable criminals.
Before the war started, food and supplies were regularly shipped to Tarutao from the mainland to sustain the prisoners and the wardens. When war broke out the British navy aggressively blockaded the Malay Peninsula, sinking any ships that dared to deliver supplies to their enemy. As the war dragged on supplies on Tarutao Island began to diminish. Food and medical rations were reduced. Prisoners of war, common criminals and wardens, began to starve alike. The prison system soon began to break down.
Out of hunger and desperation, the prisoners took to begging from boats that carried supplies past the island. Guards and inmates were on their own fighting for survival. The number of deaths from starvation and malaria continued to grow day by day.
As the situation continued to worsen and it became clear that simply begging from passing boats was not going to sustain them for long, several inmates banded together and turned to piracy. Initially the inmates attacked boats in order to steal food and medical supplies.
But when it became apparent that the naval powers were too busy fighting each other to safeguard the high seas, the pirates became more audacious and violent. Many more inmates and even prison guards took to piracy. Soon they began to attack ships indiscriminately, stealing all the cargo that the vessels carried. The prolonged war had carved out a huge black market for goods that were in short supply all over the region. As they attacked the passing vessels, the pirates would plunder them of their valuable cargo. Often they would murder the passengers and crews. The boats were then set on fire and sunk to the depths of the sea.
The beautiful landscape of the island; coasts, estuaries, creeks, rivers and narrow channels served to conceal the deadly marauders. According to reports from passing vessels, travellers soon began to fear for their own safety when passing the archipelago as vicious rumors of pirate attacks began to spread throughout the region.
Another Italian traveler, Niccolo' de' Conti (c.1440) mentioned the islands and said that the names means "island of gold", probabily referring at some hidden tresure.
Geographic isolation, heavily restricted travel, mysterious Stone
Age culture and totally uncharted waters characterise this zone.