Skimming in over palm trees and brightly coloured houses against a cloudless blue sky on the Andaman Islands really made me smile. Mainly in contrast as this moment of quiet quiescent reverence was preceeded only hours before by a highly unsavoury incident with some savvy streetwise macaque monkeys at the hotel, who viciously pillaged my innocently drying clothes leaving the tattered shreds crudely strewn. My efforts at squeezing both head and arms through the dirty bannisters of my balcony to grasp some remaining frayed items were inexorably met with the sudden and belligerent toothy grimace of the head honcho, which sent both myself, and the hotel porter who was asssiting me, rolling comically backwards into the room and scrambling to slam the door firmly shut, my head accordingly battered. Anyway, Port Blair airport hemmed with coconut palms and decorated in washed out sun bleached licks of paint felt suitaby tropical as I filled out my visa application and signed various disclaimers designed to prevent visitors from crumbling the coral reefs and besmirching the beaches. Long itemised lists of prohibited items, actions and activities decorated almost every wall, my favourite being the extremely detailed forbiddance of 'eve teasing', or 'wrong fully engaging a female in deroggatory acts of verbal accostation' and such like. The punctillious judicial jargon was a struggle for me to wade through with the help of an Engilsh degree so I wandered how other nationalisites and those who exersice local vernacular are supposed to derive any influence from such balmy bureaucracy.
I was heading for ANET, the Andaman and Nicobar Environmental Team, for a 6 week volunteer placement to offer my services for the good of their myriad of inspiring projects. Ravi, ANET's taximan, aside from being half an hour late, was very jovial and a good companion to drive me through the lush jungle forests to New Wandoor about 40 minutes North (regrettably it later transpires that his beguiling smile masks an undercurrent of guerilla commission and extoritinate charges and he proceeds to subtly shafts us of much cash. Still, we are in India so it's really only friendly banter). The South Andaman Island is the largest of the Andaman and Nicobar's 572 stong archipelagio on which roughly 400,000 inhabitants scatter themselves, with one quarter residing in Port Blair. However, there are other far flung factions completely adverse to the comparatively urbanite town dwellers of this small port. A multitude of tribes including the Jarwars, Onges, Andamnese and Karen people occupy many of the islands, the inhospitable former actively warding off an contact with the developing world around them. The story goes that following the devestation of the tsunami, a relief helicopter hovered in over these peoples offering supplies and assistance but it was soon forcibly rebuked and repelled by a gust of resolute arrows fired from tribesmans' bows. It was quite humbling to be so near to such untouched civilisations especially given the history of India and its wide spread colonisationation which nonetheless stretched this far into the ocean but left some stones unturned having not infultrated these primitive havens. Millions of years ago along
the huge Indian Tectonic Plate collided catastrophically with the Burmese Plate to coincidentally form the clandestine yet comely islands which are hundreds of kilometers from the East coast of the mainland in the Bay of Bengal, and are actually much closer to Burma and Malaysia than India itself. The 750 km of islands lay along the Alpide Belt, running from this area, through the Himalayas, into Europe along the Alps and off into the Altantic, which is geologically significantfor its turbulence and seismic activitiy evident in frequent cyclones, quakes and the unforgettable tsumani in 2004. In fact, whilst I was on the islands an earth quake struck underwater measuring a reasonable 5.5 on the richter scale, although we didnt feel the tremors. Driving from the port took us first out of town and alongside vast expanses of salty lakes that settled in the wake of the giant tsunami wave, alterring the agricultural dynamic of the land, uprooting trees and devestating houses, however harborring new and diverse eco-systems which sprung up in respone to provide a positive lining to the dark cloud, and are now protected throughout the islands. Houses grew more sporadic as the jungle grew thicker around us and we descended into the Island.
We pulled off the sleepy rural track into a shade of the entensive jungle canopy and a dwelling of large rustic but well structured wooden huts, tents and shacks. Interconnected by little dirt tracks that split up the foliage strewn ground which rustled and crackled with scurring lifeforms away your every step, the little labyrynth had an exciting robinson crusoe ambience. House rules sensibly dictate that you never set foot on the paths by night without some form of torch, for fear of crushing a toad, trampling a newt, or even rousing a king cobra...
Daily doses of fauna. A rare veroxie gecko (although I'm certain this isn't how it is spelt), a chilled
and inconspicuous leaf insect, and the perplexingly entitled bronze back snake, given its brazen green colourings
I was showed to the volunteer tent, an impressive yet fundamentally austere canvas room with 5 others housed on thin, single camping mattresses. However, the busy choice of interior decoration remedied its stark simplicity in exhibiting a relentless fleur de lis type print repeated hundreds of times in floral rows throughought the entire inside surface of the tent, calmed somewhat by the hanging of additional bunting and soon my display of pictures, hanging decorations and photographs. Part of ANET's remit is pressure on local policy regarding waste and energy consumption and as such measures including rain water harvesting are employed to try and reduce the facilities impact on the environment. So showers were sought by upending buckets of browny green hued water over your head in the privacy of a set of wicker wooden huts, it was awesome, so bloody intpuch with nature! But I use the term privacy loosely due to the gappy approach to woven sheets that constituted the four walls of each cubicle (an eye-brow raising factor of the washing facilities I combatted with strategically hung items of clothing draped over the danger zones). The toilets were rudimentary shacks situated off the leafy path ways, and the wash area enabled the spritely brushing of teeth under the shadow of sundry species of shady trees which sprouted ambrosial panicles of beautiful spinulous pinky firework flowers which could be observed blossoming and wilting in diurnal cycles.
To my dismay the showers were also home to several large species of brown speckled thick legged spiders, a formideable looking, vaguely tarantual-esque tropical version of our house spider. There was a notably terrifying encounter with such a creature during the sort of lengthy shower in which I was endeavouring to wash my body, matted hair and almost all my clothes. Realising I had an accompanying vouyer upon opening my eyes after the first bucket made the remainder of the wash a tricky affair. Every bubble of soap that wandered haphazardly into my eyes resulted in an awkward slippery struggle to regain visual in order to verify the spider's acceptable proximity. A loud and running commentary of my feelings and emotions to my friend in the next shack along was a source of some comfort, although rarely seemed to warrant reply. The next day I numinously found an ever so slightly smaller spider frozen dermonstratively in its final death battle with a giant red ant curled up together on my sketch book and so I was able to cautioualy investigate its sizeable and sturdy body loaded with a multitude of terrifying tiny, shiny eyes and long hairy legs with the help of rudimetary tongs fashioned foom shells.
I even stroked its little body and later sketched its progressively le grotesque form which I steadily began to appreciate, and the whole caper really provided rudimentary therapy for the crippling phobia.
The first week on the Andamans was slow as a group of 30 students flooded the jungle on a school trip. However this afforded some fun fire side poi and hula classes during one of ANET's delicious barbeque nights. The expert chefs crafted an enormous bamboo wicker grill that they then secured over a dug out coal fire about 6ft by 4ft which was piled with banana leaves encasing chicken, fish, potatoes and whole red onions. Intridued by the set up I offered my help to make the large grill, only to be met by a vacant stare and a resolute if not unfriendly 'no'. There went my hope of any cooking classes this month! But each to their own, and as a result most likely: the food was absolutely awesome. Throughout the month breakfast, lunch and dinner appeared in abundance under the wooded shelter of the dining room in a rustic buffet form. Dahls, pickles, coconut vegetables, fish and paneer curries, salads and papads covered the table and comfortably fed the 40 or so staff members and visitor groups.
ANET is surrounded closely by an enveloping coastline wrapping tightly round two of its
corners, which exhibit a stunning array of life. The mangroves are home to hardy species of salt water resilient trees with high knee roots and are exemplary of 8% of the Earth's coastal regions. The trees and plants thrive in their saline habitat by nifty adaptations such as waxy surfaces to their foliage to prevent evaporation of their valuable water, and pores on the underside to expel the salty byproduct. The clay ground is bleached, cracked and dry during the low tide and under submerged ankle deep water by high tide, during both of which it is equally teeming with life. Mudskippers, fiddler crabs, sea snails, hermits, target fish, sting rays and eels live amonst the spindulous mangrove roots which offer early asylum to juvinilles and other slow moving vulnerable creatures. Every footstep through the sand caused a flicker of a thousand scurrying legs or flaps of fins as crab and skippers disappear down their holes at the speed of light. The mudskippers were arguably my favourites, semi-amphibious fish which skim the water surface and can survive on land for many minutes due to a pocket of water they store behind their big googly eyes. Their rapid blinking coats the eye with moisture whilst transferring an imperative splash to their gills keeping oxygen flowing into their lungs before they dash over a puddle to replenish their watery stores. The adaptations are never-ending and incredible.
The other beach further round the corner on the costal outcrop is a littoral zone where the towering jungle meets the white sandy beach in a picturesque clash of environments. Palm trees creeping to between 30 and 40 ft are flanked by utterly ginormous didu, andamn redwood and mahu bullet wood trees which must be pushing heights of 80ft+ in some instances. A treacherous walk through the jungle absailing down root ropes to scale earthy drops brought us out into a leafy expanse of creepers and ferns which encased a football field sized clearing of the trees before we ducked under some draped branches to emerge on the beach further North. Sentinel exposed boulders contain some of the jungle from spilling over onto the beach, and watch over the coast line fortified by creepers and the resillient roots of strangler trees. These are grisly arboreal beasts which find footing in any environment from rock to other living trees before they envelop and dominate using their host as a foundation. Some have even defeated the largest banyan trees to produce an alien metamorphasising tree of several species dripping in different coloured veins and branches. The beaches are laden with utterly enormous boughs and roots of fallen trees mercilessly uprooted during the tsunami
before being hurtled to far flung beaches to rest. The salty solution has stripped them bare and the sun bleached their skin over many years so their presence emits a haunting white glow over the beaches. But by night, their intricate hairy roots, which form towering tangled verticle circles up to 15ft high, are home to banded sea kraits, potently venemous snakes which seek refuge there for sleep. One night we spotted 8 different blue lipped sea snakes, some sleeping amongst the roots, some langarously slithereing away to avoid the glare of our red filtered torches. The gutsy proximity between man and beast can be sufficiently strained by the fact theat their poision emitting fangs are set far back into their small gape so that only a bite to the ear lobe or the webbing of the fingers could perhaps be suitable for a deadly bite. And exerting such a mortal wound allegedly dilapidates their energy stores so significantly, they'd be hard pressed to bother when slithering away into the sea seems like a far less strenuous measure.
ANET has two push bikes and aside from the lack of gears and the disgracefully weak brakes, and the fact that the front of the frame lurched heart-wrenchingly forwards when too much inadviseable relaxation loads pressure onto the handlebars, they facilitated enlightening cycle rides round the sleepy tracks of the local area. A 5km ride away was New Wandoor beach near the fishing jetty, an area slightly besmeeched by the luckily tucked away but rather horrendous and strangely barren Sea Princess resort. The front of this ghastly tourist edifice edges the beach with typical Indian architecture, a perplexingly ugly pooly laid concrete fence of about 4 and a half foot high which was spined forebodingly with shards of glass to prevent intruders....should they not wish to hop the gate which breaks the wall a few feet away. It was a bizarre establishment we would occasionally head to for beers in their central bar run by officious staff who insist on blaring obnoxious dance music, or more appropriately the same 5-10 ostentacious tracks, much to all residents' and visitors' disdain. The huts hemmed a central expanse of sporadic palm trees in regimented rows leaving the area feeling a little barren, aside from the aspiring night club the haughty bar men run in the middle. It's just so perculiar that land in the middle of the most heavenly beaches is so monumentally misused and missing the mark.
But further down the beach a ring of coconut, puri and kalupi venders encircled a perciliar dilapidated but once colourful beachy building mounted bizarrely on 6ft stilts that, deserted, looked out not imposingly and more interesting from behind the palms over the beautiful white beach. I loved cycling here after a solitary sit in the Buddhist Meditation Centre for a fresh coconut and attempt at sounding a conch to the amusment of the proficient locals. Ignoring the warnings of salt water crocodile, dips in the crystal clear shallow waters were beyond celestial and wrapped up a sweaty midday bike ride sublimely. Although like the animals which infuse every single corner of the junge, intertidals spaces and beaches it is easy to adapt and quickly acclimatise to new surroundings and accept the environment insensately, I tried to ensure this was not the cae in New Wandoor. Most moments I feel like I had to pinch myself to appreciate the mental landscape which was my home for 6 weeks.
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