I had been told to hire Pau Aong, a Karen (tribe of Burmese origin) and a fine boatman, who would help survey the many islands of the Andaman archiplago. It was a long bus-boat-bus trip from Port Blair to his settlement in the North Andamans. Soon the bus arrived at the start of the Jarawa reserve - one of the very primitive tribes in the Andamans feared for their hostility. Two armed policemen boarded the bus and we were asked to shut our windows because the Jarawas may throw spears at us. The Jarawa reserve is sandwiched between two modern towns and locals in the bus told me stories about how the Jarawas had recently dragged someone off into the forest and probably eaten him. Apparently, the Jarawas occasionally wandered into town and abducted people - the locals suspected that these abducted people were eaten because they were never seen again. After these extraordinary stories, I eagerly looked out of the bus, hoping to catch a glimpse of these people, but no such luck.... others have had more interesting encounters, and issues associated with the tribe continue…

Moving south from the Andamans to survey beaches in the Nicobar archipelago, I often stayed the night at some Nicobari tribal hut on the beach. This provided an opportunity to learn about the lives and world of this peaceful, coastal-dwelling tribe. One time after walking all day on the beach, we arrived at a little Nicobarese tribal village towards early evening. Immediately we were invited into one of the huts and offered hot, refreshing tea. A lot of people were sitting around the hut looking very glum. On inquiring why everyone was so uncharacteristically gloomy, I was informed that earlier that morning, a boat with strangers had stopped at their beach and one of the village men had accompanied them to a settlement further down the coast. He had still not returned and everyone was very anxious. I was surprised that they had let him go with strangers because in my experience, the Nicobarese would often abandon their huts and run off into the forest when an unknown boat arrived at any of these small, remote, coastal villages. Finally, as the gloom deepened, one of his despairing relatives asked me in great earnestness, "do you think the men in the boat have eaten him?" (We later encountered the missing man at another village quite alive and intact. He was just enjoying a few extra days away from home…)

Certainly, this was a very different world from the one I had grown up in...