Andaman Islands

Why Andaman Islands works

The Andaman Islands are an archipelago of some 200 islands in the northeastern Indian Ocean, lying roughly 130 kilometres southwest of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, separated from them by the Ten Degree Channel, the Andamans form the maritime boundary between the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east. Most of the islands make up the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Union Territory of India, while a smaller group, the Coco Islands and Preparis Island, belongs to Myanmar. The highest point in the group, Saddle Peak, rises to 732 metres on North Andaman Island.

Genetic evidence suggests the indigenous Andamanese peoples share a common origin and settled the islands more than 26,000 years ago, when lower sea levels during the last glacial period narrowed the distance to the Asian mainland; the two main Andamanese linguistic groups are estimated to have diverged around 16,000 years ago. The islands' modern history turns on the British colonial era: the Bengal Presidency established a naval base and penal colony on Chatham Island in 1789, a settlement later named Port Blair after the naval lieutenant Archibald Blair who founded it. Disease forced the government to abandon the first colony in 1796, but the Indian Rebellion of 1857 left the British holding large numbers of prisoners, and a new convict settlement was built at Port Blair beginning that November using inmate labour — the same Port Blair that remains the territory's administrative centre today.

Port Blair, served by Veer Savarkar International Airport, the archipelago's only commercial airport, is the usual gateway for visitors, who also arrive by ship from Chennai, Visakhapatnam, and Kolkata. The islands' geology is unusually active for the region: the group includes at least eleven mud volcanoes, and Barren Island is the only active volcano in the Indian subcontinent, with its most recent eruption reported in December 2022, drawing interest in geotourism. Elsewhere, Interview Island in Middle Andaman — the largest wildlife sanctuary in the territory — holds a population of feral elephants originally brought in for forest work by a timber company and released when the company went under, a population that has since been the subject of research.

The climate across the Andamans is typical of tropical islands at this latitude: consistently warm, tempered by sea breezes, with irregular rainfall that stays drier through the north-east monsoon and turns much wetter during the south-west monsoon. Vegetation shifts across the group, from moist deciduous forest in Middle Andaman to wet evergreen forest thick with woody climbers in North Andaman, while mangroves line much of the coast in a pattern similar to the rainforests of Burma's west coast. The forests of South Andaman are especially rich in epiphytic ferns and orchids, and protected areas on Little Andaman, Narcondam, North Andaman, and South Andaman aim chiefly at preserving the coastline and marine wildlife.

The islands carry a number of endemic species found nowhere else, including the Andaman spiny shrew, the Andaman shrew, Jenkins's shrew, and the Andaman horseshoe bat, alongside the Andaman wild boar, a subspecies once thought endemic and now protected under India's Wildlife Protection Act. Other animals, such as spotted deer and the Indian muntjac, were introduced to the islands rather than native to them. Despite logging pressure and a growing population driven by migration from the Indian mainland, much of the Andaman forest remains largely unspoiled, and its combination of rainforest, reef, and volcanic geology continues to draw both researchers and travellers to Port Blair and the islands beyond it.

• Andaman Islands — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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