Try to Visit This Manhattan-Sized Island and You May Not Leave Alive

Sometimes paradise is better off lost: Off the coast of India in the Bay of Bengal, a Manhattan-size island called North Sentinel Island boasts a deep green canopy of trees, stretches of sandy beaches, coral reef barriers—and a population that’s decidedly hostile to outsiders, who aren’t likely to live long.

As Wackulus explains, the isolated indigenous tribe, one of the last of its kind on Earth, almost always attacks visitors. A little digging uncovered this story: After a night of drinking in 2006, two fishermen drifted too close to the island and were killed by the Sentinelese, who’ve lived there for 60,000 years.

A helicopter sent to recover their bodies was halted by tribesmen’s arrows, the Telegraph reported at the time; the air generated by the copter’s rotors revealed their bodies in shallow graves.

One of the earliest known encounters a century earlier ended when a convict who’d escaped from the neighboring Andaman Islands ended up on the island with his throat slit, the New York Times reported in 2012.

In 1967, the Sentinelese—a Stone Age people but for the metal-tipped arrows carved from wrecked ships—hid from an Indian government expedition, during which a marker was placed on the island, declaring it part of India. (Read more from “Try to Visit This Manhattan-Sized Island and You May Not Leave Alive” HERE)

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