Condé Nast TRAVELER (cntraveler.com) 2010 Gold List • Andam

an Islands • Moscow

• Northern California January 2010 08434 CRUISE SPECIAL: 10 RULES FOR PERFECT PORTS OF CALL

681GOLD LIST

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ALPS, ANGUILLA, ANd SANTA FE

Great Deals of Winter

CALIFORNIA’S SECRET EdENSBy Bike, Kayak, Horse

INdIA’S MAGIC ISLES

Exquisite Andamans

HOW SAFE ISYOUR CABIN AIR? Better Than You Think

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T r u T h I N T r A v e L J A N u A r y 2 0 1 0

deep blue sea

BABAR MeAnd the

This is The Life!After thirty years of working for a logging company, Rajan the elephant has retired to Havelock Island, where he spends his days sunning, swimming, and eating bananas on heavenly Beach No. 7.

The Andaman Islands, closed to foreigners until

1995, are the ultimate tropical mystery in that

cabinet of wonders called India. Tony PerroTTeT

loses himself in a place of unearthly perfection,

where crabs climb trees, elephants swim, and man

has barely left his markP h o t o g r a p h s b y

Cathrine Wessel

BABAR MeAnd

C o n dE n a s t t r av E l E r / c n t r a v e l e r. c o m

1970s to work for local logging companies, and he spent a grueling thirty years hauling felled trees through the jungle—underfed, overworked, and underpaid, not un-like his human co-workers. At the time, there were some two hundred elephants on the archipelago, and the only way companies could move them between islands, once the hardwood trees had been extracted, was to have them swim. Then, in 2002, the Indian Supreme Court banned logging in the Andamans to protect the archipelago’s biological diversity.

Most of the elephants were shipped back to the main-land to labor at Hindu temples. But one lucky beast, Ra-jan, whose rich owner was in no hurry to sell, was left on Havelock Island in the care of his old mahout. There he enjoyed an enviable life, spending his time grazing, doz-ing, and, about once a week, swimming in the sea, an ac-tivity that he gave every indication of enjoying immensely. The swimming elephant became Havelock’s unofficial mascot and a celebrity among the few travelers who made it here. But in 2006, his owner received a lavish offer from a temple in Kerala—about $65,000—and Rajan faced a re-turn to a harsh, often cruel work regime. So the owners of

a small jungle lodge, Barefoot at Havelock, put out an Inter-net appeal to former guests and raised the cash to buy Rajan outright, so he could enjoy his old age on Beach No. 7.

Luckily, the morning I swam with him, the Indian Ocean was like a warm bath, just the way Rajan—and I—like it. I first treaded water a few feet away, watching him step like a delicate matron into the sea. He raised his trunk to breathe as if it were a giant snorkel, and his

mahout slid off his back and swam alongside him; soon Rajan was pedaling away with his feet, gliding through the deep blue with unexpected ease. In my goggles and fins, I drifted alongside, admiring Rajan’s graceful, slow-motion movements, and at one stage brushed my palm along his wrinkled flanks. For one unforgettable stretch, I flippered downward and swam beneath Rajan, watch-ing him from below; weightless and drifting in silence, I had the strange sensation that we were flying.

I’d already learned that the Andamans were insanely exotic; but this was taking things to a new level, more like a Hindu fantasy—Babar gone Bollywood.

I SHOuLd HARdLy HAve BeeN SuRpRISed By dreamlike experiences in the Andaman Islands, given that the archipelago has always been the least-known, least-populated, and least-visited corner of that sprawl-ing cabinet of wonders, India.

Few places on earth have been so shrouded in obscu-rity. For centuries, these 550 specks of jungle in the Bay of Bengal were ranked alongside Zanzibar, pago pago, and Timbuktu as the ultimate in tropical mystery. Sailors told fantastical tales about the islands’ tiny, black-skinned “cannibals” who would butcher shipwrecked crews—Marco polo, with his usual flourish, insisted that the na-tives had “heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise”—and the Andamans’ image hardly improved in 1858, when they were finally settled by the British as a brutal prison colony. The new arrivals were terrified when they encoun-tered the islands’ Stone Age inhabitants, who were related to African pygmies and lived in four tribal groups, the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Senti-nelese. (Anthropologists surmise that they arrived on foot from Africa sixty thousand years ago and were cut off when the land bridge flooded after the last ice age.) The only news that leaked out of the islands occurred when a visiting British viceroy of India was murdered by a prison-

uST dON’T SwIM IN FRONT OF HIM,” wHISpeRed Sanjit Biswas, a worker at the jungle lodge where I was staying in the Andaman Islands. “That can spook him.” My guide from Bangalore nodded in solemn agreement. “Rajan’s a little bit fussy. Sometimes he just won’t go in, and nobody can really force him.” ¶ Okay, I thought, as I tiptoed through the shallows of Beach No. 7 to meet my monstrous swimming buddy. No sudden moves or I could be squashed like a chapa-ti. ¶ Rajan finished off a pile of bananas and thudded down to the gently lapping waterline. His mahout, a wiry villager named Nasru, stepped up onto one tusk and slipped over his back as casually as if he were hop-ping on a bicycle. As for me, I still hovered uncertainly. I mean, swim-ming with a twelve-thousand-pound pachyderm is a bit more ambitious than cavorting with a dolphin in Florida. what if he panicked? Turns out I shouldn’t have worried; Rajan was more comfortable in the water

than I was. ¶ The story of the swimming elephant of the Andamans has all the elements of a modern fairy tale. Rajan was first brought from mainland India as a youngster in the

J“martyrs’ memorialDuring the colonial era, the British imprisoned and executed Indian nationalists at the Cellular Jail in Port Blair on South Andaman. The prison has since become a much revered monument to the long fight for independence, and well worth a visit.

local color The An-damans’ original (and endangered) inhabi- tants are some of the most remote tribal groups on earth. Since Indian independence in 1947, the islands have been flooded with immigrants, mainly Bengali refu-gees from Bangladesh.

C o n dE n a s t t r av E l E r / c n t r a v e l e r. c o m

er while strolling along the docks. It’s no wonder that the Andamans’ sole appearance in world literature was in Ar-thur Conan doyle’s 1890 Sherlock Holmes thriller Sign of the Four, in which a one-legged convict, having clubbed a guard to death with his false leg, escapes from the prison and stalks Londoners in the company of a murderous, dart-blowing “savage” with gnashing yellow fangs.

The veil of mystery has hardly lifted in the genera-tions since. It didn’t help that, after independence, the Indian government kept a tight seal on the strategically sensitive frontier. Non-Indians were not permitted to explore the Andamans at all until 1995, and even today, foreign nationals are allowed to visit only some thirty-eight of the islands.

And yet in the last few years, word is finally leaking out about the Andamans’ unearthly perfection. The centuries of isolation present us with a rare time capsule. Today, fully ninety percent of the Andaman Islands’ land is protected as national park or as tribal reserve for the native inhabitants. The beaches are pristine and the diving spectacular, and the jungle shudders with wild-life—including Andaman cobras, twenty-foot saltwater crocodiles, and such endemic oddities as emerald geckos

and the world’s largest crab, the gigantic robber crab, which can climb palm trees, knock down coconuts, and crack them open for the milk. As yet, there are no

grand tourist developments, only modest hotels, bam-boo huts, and thatched-roof cottage “resorts.”

even so, this idyllic quality is under growing threat. Only eleven of the islands are inhabited, but since In-dian independence in 1947, these have been flooded with immigrants, mostly Bengali refugees from Bangladesh, swamping the descendants of the original settlers and putting the protected reserves at risk. The other great threat, of course, is tourism. The influx was delayed by the tragic 2004 tsunami, which damaged many of the is-lands (although miraculously caused relatively little loss of life). But visitor numbers have tripled since before the disaster and continue to grow.

To me, all this made the Andamans an irresistible prospect. I wanted to see for myself whether this forgot-ten patch of tropical paradise was going to survive its im-pending popularity. And I had another, more historical agenda: to untangle the confused reports about the four tribal groups, who have suffered from 150 years of di-sastrous colonial contact. The Great Andamanese had already been pushed to the edge of extinction. would the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Sentinelese survive the twenty-first century?

I wAS pORING OveR ANTIque pHOTO- graphs of the “tribals,” as they are referred to by locals, as I flew toward the only airport on the Andamans, port Blair, and the pilot banked over a tiny, mango-shaped island called North Sentinel: Its dense forests are home to the Sen-tinelese, who, according to the London-based advocacy group Survival International, are the

most isolated tribe on the planet today. Only a hundred or so hunter-gatherers live here, having always violently re-jected any contact from the outside world.

After the 2004 tsunami, the Indian government sent a helicopter to check if they needed help. As the helicopter hovered, a Sentinelese warrior, naked except for bark around his midriff, ran onto the beach with bow drawn, ready to shoot a six-foot arrow.

But I had to start my trip to the Andamans through

JarawaReserve

Port BlairBeach #7 (Barefoot)

Beach #5

Fortune Resort Bay

NORTHANDAMAN

MIDDLEANDAMAN

SOUTHANDAMAN

LITTLEANDAMAN

Bay of B

enga l

Andaman S ea

Tamarind Camp

Trunk Road

HAVELOCK I.

LONG I.

ROSS I.

STRAIT I.

RITCHIE’SARCHIPELAGO

Mt. Harriet

N. SENTINEL

miles

kilometers

00 20

20

INDIA

The remoteness of the Andaman Archipelago has always been part of its mystique. Most travelers

rush away from rough-and-ready Port Blair as soon as they’ve obtained their free tourist permit, which allows visits to 38 of the 550-odd islands. But it’s worth lingering for a day to visit the Cellular Jail, where Indian nationalist heroes were locked up by the British, and Ross Island, genteel home to the colonial rulers until 1947 and now a poetic ruin. Fortune Resort Bay has balconies overlooking the harbor (91-3192-234-101; doubles, $124).

Havelock Island, just three hours away by public ferry ($8), has the best natural attractions. The west coast is lined with small hotels,

mostly favored by backpackers. The best is Wild Orchid, on Beach No. 5 (91-3192-282-472; doubles, $75–$85). Fifteen minutes away, in the rain forest on the west coast, Beach No. 7 (a.k.a. Radhanagar) is one of Asia’s prettiest. There, at the classic Barefoot at Havelock resort, cottages range from the economical Nicobari to the Duplex, which sleeps eight (91-3192-236-008; cottages, $206–$260). Barefoot Scuba, on Beach No. 3, is sand-cheap (91-3192-236-008; cottages, $3–$76). Apart from a few Bangladeshi chai shops and eateries, which sell thalis for about 50 cents, most restaurants are in lodges and resorts.

You can also stay on nearby uninhabited isles. Tamarind Camp, on Long Island, is accessed via

motorized dunghi, or dugout canoe, with a guide ($196 per night).

The Rough Guide to India has the most detailed section on the islands ($27). Mudhusree Mukerjee’s The Land of Naked People: Encounters with Stone Age Islanders is a few years out of date but covers the distressing fate of the Andamanese “tribals” in detail (Houghton Mifflin, $24). The most up-to-date sources are andaman.org and Survival International; the latter’s page on the Jarawa and cultural conflict (“Progress Can Kill”) is a must (survivalinternational.org). Available in Port Blair, Troubled Islands includes writings by journalist Pankaj Sekhsaria about landmark court cases to stop logging and protect the Jarawa ($10). –T. P.

The Invisible Islands

well coveredLife on Havelock Island remains sweet and simple. The locals mainly fish and farm, while tourism is still low-key and small-scale.

Map

by

Joyc

e Pe

ndol

a

grand touristThere are no

developments, onlymodesthotels, bamboo huts, and

thatched-roof cottages

outpost of empire The Andamans’ only airport is in bustling Port Blair, the old colonial capital.

forget ambienBarefoot, a tiny jungle lodge on Havelock Island, is right on Beach No. 7.

cast your netSome of the fisher-men on Havelock double as tour guides to the man-grove swamps.

castaway For the full Robinson Crusoe experience, consider taking a boat to Long Island and camping out for a couple of nights at Tamarind Camp. The Hamptons it’s not.

milk

Giganticrobber crabsclimb palm treees, knock down

coconuts, and crackthem open for the

tune out Barefoot Scuba, on Beach No. 3, has 12 cottages (from $3), a restaurant, and dive boats. Surrounded by dense green jungle and turquoise water, it is the perfect jumping-off point for an under-water escape from the madness of the real world.

As the helicopter hovered,

onto the beach, ready to shoot a

six-foot arrow

a Sentinelese

the old colonial capital, port Blair, which drifted on for decades as one of the loneliest outposts of the em-pire. Today, most foreign travelers don’t look beyond the town’s frayed exterior, with its chaotic parade of auto-rickshaws plying shabby provincial streets. But to Indians, port Blair is saturated with the history of the independence struggle against the British, and has be-come a pilgrimage site as revered as, say, Concord is for Americans. “The Andamans have a mythological sta-tus,” explained Rudrangshu Mukherjee, an Indian jour-nalist I had met in Calcutta. “In the early 1900s, those who chose to resist the British with violence were either sentenced to death by hanging or deported to port Blair for life imprisonment. Today, these men would be called terrorists. Our nationalist historians call them armed revolutionaries.”

The sacred site is the Cellular Jail. This colonial Guan-tánamo, with seven splayed legs like a starfish, was built in 1906 as a rare example of the panopticon, a prison sys-tem where a single warder on each floor could monitor hundreds of prisoners at once by looking down each of the seven long corridors. It was closed in 1945, and four wings collapsed in a 1941 earthquake, but the remains have been carefully restored, with the cruelty of the Brit-ish as the prime exhibit. I walked past an eternal flame to a life-size model of a prisoner tied to the triangle for whipping. Indian tourists inspected the gallows, where all prisoners were forced to watch executions. And room after room was filled with snapshots of men, like Baba Bhan Singh, who may be obscure to the rest of the world but are beloved heroes and martyrs here.

THe NexT AFTeRNOON, I wAS sunning myself on the roof of a pub-lic ferry as it skimmed across shal-low reefs. By the time we reached Havelock Island three hours later, the forlorn clutter of port Blair was no more than a distant memory. At the arrival jetty, just a few makeshift

teahouses sat in the shade of coconut palms. A Bengali woman strolled past in a purple sari with a blue umbrella, while two cheery schoolboys in uniforms and neatly part-ed black hair skipped by holding hands.

The modern world was definitely receding fast.Since access was opened in 1995, Havelock Island has

become the favorite goal for travelers to the Andamans: It’s where the most alluring elements of the archipelago are condensed into a sweet tropical cocktail of coral, sand, and rain forest. In the 1800s, it was roamed by the fierce Great Andamanese, who picked off stray convicts until the British forcibly removed them; it then remained uninhabited until the 1960s, when logging camps were set up around the coast. when villages sprang up on the same sites, they simply stuck with the numbers that once identified the camps, from No. 1 to No. 7.

Tourism on Havelock is still homespun, small-scale, and personal, like an Indian version of Hemingway’s Key west. This became obvious when I met Susheel dix-it, the intense forty-six-year-old who founded the tiny

C o n dE n a s t t r av E l E r / c n t r a v e l e r. c o m

jungle lodge Barefoot in 1996. As we drove along the one-lane road to the west side of the island, dodging roosters and crabs, Susheel explained how business had been rather slow until 2004, when Time magazine suddenly named Beach No. 7 the best in Asia. “I think people were amazed,” he said with a laugh. “They looked at the magazine and thought, Where the bloody hell are the Andamans?”

To me, Barefoot still felt like a lost colony of shipwrecked sailors, with eighteen thatched-roof cabins in the forest. In-cense sticks were burning by the pathways; leaves fell con-stantly from the trees, like snow. I strolled the two minutes to Beach No. 7 (which has officially received the new name of Radhanagar, although nobody uses it) to find out for myself what perfection looks like. The vines parted to reveal a mile-long crescent of sand, unmarred by even a pebble underfoot.

The water was crystal clear. Jungle poured like a tidal wave from the hills behind. I had to admit, you couldn’t come up with a more flawless stretch if it was computer-generated. It was also gloriously empty. At midday, there were only a few swimmers—a dozen Indians, fully clothed, as is their wont, standing in water up to their waists, and as many europeans, near-naked, lolling on the sand.

IN THIS ISOLATed dReAMSCApe, eveN the simplest activity results in bizarre scenes. I went to dinner at the island’s best restaurant, an open pavilion which has since closed, and cau-tiously ordered a glass of Indian champagne. (Called, grandly, Marquise de pompadour, it is made in Maharashtra and should have on its label, nowhere near as bad as you’d think.)

Suddenly the chef ran in and excitedly declared, “There’s a turtle nesting on the beach!” The few guests immediately dashed along the starlit sands to watch from a distance as a giant leatherback dug her nest. Later, when I asked Julio, the restaurant’s maître d’, for the bathroom, he pointed to the dark bushes.

“But you take a torch,” he said, grinning. “Snakes!’I thought he was joking until the next afternoon at Bare-

foot when, a stone’s throw from my room, I was summoned by Susheel to watch a fifteen-foot king cobra devour a twelve-foot krait snake. eyeing me suspiciously, the cobra worked its lethal jaws in a machinelike rhythm, then plowed into the jungle to digest in private.

And yet, pristine as Havelock was, there were ominous signs for the future. The five thousand immigrant farmers

continue to clear land for paddies for their favorite crop, rice. Backpacker hostels are sprouting on the west coast. Garbage disposal is the number one problem, with piles of refuse simply dumped near the jetty. Signs in the villages implore now! try to do something for nature or face di-saster, to no avail. with the Indian government offering no help, Susheel recently bought a plastic compressor himself, which will recycle bags and bottles into tiny pellets that can be used in road construction, and is planning an incentive program to get settlers involved. “I feel responsible,” he said. “I was the one who really brought the outside world here.”

To show me the Andamans he grew up with, Susheel of-fered to take me on a three-day camping trip to the unin-habited islands north of Havelock. At dawn, our dunghi, or motorized dugout canoe, slipped from the jetty onto a glassy sea, manned by five Karen tribesmen, originally brought from Burma to the Andamans by the British for their seamanship skills. I sat in the prow and allowed myself a modest Heart of Darkness moment as I disappeared into the tropics. we passed Strait Island, where the last remnants of the Great Andamanese were resettled by the Indian gov-ernment in 1970 to stop them succumbing to alcohol and despair. The population had been five thousand in the mid-nineteenth century, but war and disease have left only about fifty survivors today. The same sorry tale was repeated for the Onge tribe on Little Andaman, whose numbers have col-lapsed from more than six hundred in 1911 to about a hun-dred today. Although half of their island is a tribal reserve, Bengali immigrants now outnumber them there 120 to one.

Camping gave me a sense, however remote, of what life must have been like before the British gunboats arrived. For two days, I indulged in the Crusoe island fantasy, swimming, basking, and eating fish roasted on open fires. we camped behind the beach, sipping Kingfisher beers as hermit crabs sidled around our feet. Hungry bats dropped fruit seeds onto our tarpaulin, making regular thuds, while Susheel told stories from his childhood in port Blair, when he and friends would take boats to wrecked ships to see what they could salvage before the hulls were sucked under the waves.

“what else should we do?” he said, laughing. “There was no Tv!”

At dawn, I was awakened by the Karen patriarch, Nor-man, who handed me a glass of chai. It was then that I found my perfect moment. I set off into the bay in a kayak as the sun erupted in a pink ball from the horizon and bird calls echoed from the foliage. Suddenly the water was boil-ing around me—hundreds of tiny fish were leaping out of the waves. Just as quickly, the frenzy subsided and I was left alone, bobbing in silence.

It may not have been the ineffable inner peace described by the sadhus, but it was as close as I may get in this lifetime.

SeduCTIve AS ALL THIS SOLITude wAS, THe Hu- man dramas on the Andamans were too compelling to ignore. Above all, I had to know what had become of the Jarawa, whose violent collision with the outside world began only in the 1970s. ever since British days, the three-hundred-strong tribe had been hostile to intruders: They slipped through the jungle like ghosts, wearing nothing but pieces of red bark around their waists, (Continued on page 150)

I watched him step like a

delicatematroninto the sea and raise his trunk

giant snorkelto breathe as if it were a

SubmerSible Despite weighing in at over twelve thousand pounds, Rajan is a surpris-ingly graceful swimmer. If you dare, dive deep and watch him from below, float-ing weightless above you, drifting in silence.

C o n dE n a s t t r av E l E r / c n t r a v e l e r. c o m

CalifoRnia Rides / andaman islands

for the year’s redwood crop. Loggers dy-namited creek dams and floated their “red gold” to the sea.

THE NExT DAY, WE WALK THE HORS- es up a gorse-covered bluff and across a highway bridge to a two-thousand-acre ranch whose owner allows Shea riding priv-ileges. Mist magnifies the white-faced cattle in a pasture containing a cemetery, the only remains of a logging town that burned to the ground during the 1906 earthquake.

A huge redwood has managed to survive in a steep gully above the meadow. “It could be more than 1,500 years old,” Shea says, gesturing at its moss-covered girth. “Trees will never get that old again un-less we raise our kids right.” The last logging boom petered out in the 1960s, and half of California’s re-maining old-growth forest now lies in the hands of just two corporations, whose new investors have pledged to log sustainably without harvesting big trees. On horseback, far from the sound of cars, we feel like we’ve ridden away from the world, and it becomes easy to see how a mysteri-ous landscape of giants, rogue waves, and earthquakes drew adventurers, pioneers, and saviors alike.

At the Howard Creek Ranch, our lodg-ing for the second half of the week, we meet Charles “Sunny” Grigg, who arrived in the 1970s, after the derelict nineteenth-century redwood milling and cattle operation had become a haven for hippies trying to live off the land. Grigg took over as caretaker and, with his wife, Sally, eventually bought and converted the 1871 farmhouse and car-riage barn into an inn. A carpenter who is writing a book about spirituality, Grigg is continually remodeling the sixty-acre prop-erty, which has gardens, farm animals, a few bohemian cabins, and paths that wander up into redwood forest or down to a three-mile stretch of beach. A swaying wood-and-metal bridge over a small creek is illuminat-ed with fairy lights. With its stuffed moose head, hot tubs, antique dolls, and eclectic conversations around the still-communal breakfast table, the main house feels dream-like—part frontier homestead, part Esalen, part “Hansel and Gretel.”

By now I’ve formed a support group, which I call Solo Travelers with Spouses Who Don’t Love Horses as Much as We Do. I’m humbled to learn over our last breakfast of strawberry-banana pancakes that some

of my fellow riders have faced down chal-lenges—including a heart attack, cancer, and the grave illness of a child—that put my fear of falling in perspective. “Horseback riding grounds me,” says a lawyer from Michigan. “You can’t multi-task while you’re doing it. And because the horse won’t always stop or go exactly when you want him to, it’s helped me learn that I can’t always be in complete control of things, and that’s okay.”

It’s our final day, and everyone—includ-ing the horses, who know they’re headed home—has been looking forward to can-

tering the long beach at the mouth of Ten-Mile River. Citron alarms me, frothing at the mouth, stomping, tossing her head as I short-en the reins. “Keep her back,” Shea warns, her eyes scanning the waves sucking at the horses’ feet, watching for patches of quicksand where they might sink and strain a tendon.

The sand turns hard and we leap away into the mist, the beach seemingly with-out end, trading turns at

the front with Shea, who is both shepherd-ing us and taking pictures. “Flight instinct is why we can ride them, you know,” she calls over the roaring surf. “Tap your heels and a horse says, ‘Okay, I’m out of here.’ ” Riding is about channeling that energy, I’ve been learning, and relaxing is the best form of control. Citron and I find our rhythm. She makes some decisions, picking her way between the other horses to avoid getting sand kicked in her face, and jumping rather than striding over a pile of kelp. When I ask her for more speed, she gives it. When I ask her to slow, she listens. I stay on her back, ecstatic, as far west as I’ve ever been.

Après-RoadVineyards and Victorian architecture, redwoods and wildflowers and beaches—the so-called redwoods belt of northern California needs to be seen slowly, not at 55 miles per hour. the best time for soft-adventure trips is late spring or shortly after labor day, when the weather is still warm, summer traffic has eased, and the rains haven’t yet set in.

Prices quoted are for January 2010.

Lodging

l| near the Russian River and dry Creek valley vineyards, tony Healdsburg’s hotel

healdsburg is popular (800-889-7188; doubles, $295–$360), thanks in part to its Dry creek Kitchen (707-431-0330; prix fixe, $34). about two blocks away, ravenous is also superb (420

Center st.; 707-431-1302; entrées, $13–$28).a fishing and lumber capital, eureka is a good

base for exploring the beaches and redwoods of Humboldt County. in the carter house inns, a Victorian-era hotel, restaurant 301 has a $90 five-course tasting menu with wine flights (800-404-1390; doubles, $165–$185; entrées, $25–$34). eureka’s former skid row is now a mini–gastronomy circuit, with avalon (third and G sts.; 707-445-0500; entrées, $20–$38) and hur-ricane Kate’s (511 second st.; 707-444-1405; entrées, $18–$29), among others.

tiny ferndale’s “butterfat mansions” (Victori-an homes built by affluent farmers) include the Victorian inn and its restaurant, Vi (888-589-1808; doubles, $105–$225).

mendocino’s 1882 maccallum house has wine tours to the anderson Valley in a guzzling stretch suV. Happily, it’s also within walking distance of the headlands, and the B&B rents bikes (800-609-0492; doubles, $185–$495). nearer fort Bragg, on Highway 1, and more convenient to Ricochet Ridge Ranch, the cleone gardens inn has a hot tub overlooking a meadow with red-woods and douglas firs (707-964-2788; doubles, $85–$195).

Reading, etc.

r| Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees elegant-ly describes the science writer’s explora-

tion of redwood canopies (Random House, $16). in The Mendocino Papers, local newspaper owner Bruce anderson recounts cultural clashes between native americans and europeans (out-of-print). Vietnam veteran Bruce Patterson shares his experiences logging redwoods and working on ranches in his essay collection, Walk-ing Tractor (Heyday Books, $15). Brad dourif and fairuza Balk star in the 2008 movie Hum-boldt County, which tells the story of a forest-dwelling, medical marijuana–growing family with hilarity and sensitivity. –s. h.

Andaman Islands(Continued from page 70)

hunting wild boar and gathering honey. Nobody even understood a word of their language. But in a flourish of misguided development, the Indian government in 1971 decided to build a road along the border of the Jarawa’s remote forest re-serve. Called the Andaman Trunk Road, it pushed frightened settlers into direct contact with the tribe, with predictably di-sastrous results. The Jarawa sabotaged the road’s construction. They ambushed and killed workers and poachers and harassed the Indian “bush police.” But they were un-able to halt it. For the next twenty years, an undeclared war simmered between tribals and settlers along the route, while Indian anthropologists tried to lure the Jarawa out

“It could be more than 1,500 years old,” says

Shea. “Trees will never get that old again unless we raise our kids right”

J a n u a ry 2 0 1 0

andaman islands

of the jungle and onto settlements, with-out success. Some tribe members began to trade honey for tobacco, sunglasses, or red cloth, a color they loved, but then grew more aggressive: On several occasions, they even held up passenger buses with bows and arrows, demanding cookies. This volatile situation changed in 1996, when a young Jarawa known as En Mei was found with a broken leg and taken to Port Blair, where he spent five months in the hospital; the man overcame his initial terror, and after his return to the forest, led groups of curious young Jarawa out of their homeland. Unfortunate-ly, the effect of the inter-action has been anything but benign: Epidemics of measles, influenza, and tuberculosis soon raced through the Jarawa, who had no immunity; their numbers sank to around 250. Stories abounded of corrupt bush policemen bribed by tourists to let them visit the Ja-rawa and ply them with trinkets in return for posed photographs, and of travel agents offering gawkers jeep tours along the road.

In 2002, the Indian Supreme Court or-dered the Trunk Road closed, but the rul-ing has been brazenly ignored. Several times a day, public buses rumble along the road from Rangat to Port Blair, car-rying a mix of settlers and tourists. Along the Jarawa reserve, the buses travel in an armed convoy to ensure that nobody gets out of the vehicles. At least the official policy has become more enlightened: At-tempts to lure the tribe from its land have been dropped, and the emphasis is now on protection. The Jarawa can leave their reserve—it’s not a prison—but outsiders are forbidden to enter.

It’s not the most comfortable ride. I perched on the edge of a bench in a packed, steaming-hot bus, as kids wailed and Hindi music blared. After a bone-rattling jour-

ney along a narrow, potholed road and two ferry crossings through croc-infested mangroves, the driver stopped at a mili-tary checkpoint where rusty signs warned against dealing with the Jarawa (and par-ticularly against taking photos). Then our “armed escort” got on board—an elderly bush policeman in a beret and frayed kha-kis, nursing a .303 rifle that looked World War II vintage. We didn’t have far to go before the Jarawa appeared—first a trio of women, naked except for fringes of red string around their waists, standing in the

road and staring at the on-coming bus. They slowly moved off while the driver shouted curses in Hindi and the Indian passengers roared with laughter and excitement. This unedify-ing scene—a small group of Jarawa casually block-ing the road, then slowly moving out of the way of our cursing convoy—was

repeated with minor variations three times along the route. While the passengers found the Jarawa hilarious, I thought they pre-sented us with a perfectly honed example of nonviolent resistance—textbook Gandhi.

Environmentalists are weighing new plans to force the closure of the road, but many in Port Blair believe it may be too late. Some Jarawa are venturing more regu-larly into settlements, where they trade for processed foods and alcohol. “The damage has been done,” one government official told me off the record. “What happened to the Native Americans and the Maori and the Australian Aborigines is now hap-pening to the Jarawa. Nothing has been learned.” But Sophie Grig of Survival In-ternational is more optimistic. “If you talk to people who are working with the Jarawa directly, you find that they are still hunting in the traditional way,” she said. “There is still every chance that, as long as their land is protected, they will remain independent and self-sufficient.”

The last, most resilient of the four tribal groups is the Sentinelese, still living on their tiny island twelve miles west of Port Blair. I couldn’t go even if I wanted to—landing there is illegal and, given that our bacteria are so dangerous, unthinkable—but on my flight back to the mainland, I glimpsed their emerald speck one last time. It was incred-ible to imagine what was happening beneath that dense jungle canopy: An estimated one hundred Sentinelese are there, living their ancient lifestyle, apparently indifferent to the outside world and so far vigorously re-sisting all encroachments; their canoes are

not stable enough to cross open seas. In the 1960s, some Indian anthropologists did try to make contact by dropping coconuts on the beach, but the islanders drew bows on anyone advancing. Now, thankfully, they are left alone: Once a year, relief workers with binoculars observe them from offshore to make sure there haven’t been any disasters.

But will this be enough? One day, I sup-pose, curiosity will get the better of them, and some young Sentinelese will invite con-tact, unaware of the lethal reservoir of dis-ease that has historically decimated other tribes. We can only hope that they will take their time.

The world would be a far less wondrous place without them.

Credits

Photographs: page 6: Bottom: hemis.fr/Soumillard Annette. page 8: From top: Dinesh Khanna; courtesy Oberoi Hotels & Resorts; Timothy Baker. page 10: From top: Courtesy Susan Hack; courtesy Tony Perrottet; courtesy Cathrine Wessel; courtesy Marc Barasch. page 20: Bottom (4): Jan G. Hagan. page 23: Jenny Acheson/Axiom. page 26: Middle: Courtesy Art Gallery of Alberta. Bottom: Courtesy Knopf. page 28: iStockPhoto (balloon, basket, drink, Napa, Shanghai, tiger, tea); Fotosearch (sailboat, fish); Galle: Michael Busselle/Getty Images; courtesy Modern Longboards (surfboard); courtesy Sony (camera); courtesy Candela NYC (sandal); courtesy Armani (bag); courtesy Smythson (book). page 30: Top: Lars von Bennigsen. page 34: Clockwise from left: Aurora Photos/ Henry Georgi; courtesy The Viceroy; Doug Merriam. page 40: Corbis. page 94: Jeff Topping for The New York Times/Redux. page 98: Charly Kurz/Laif. page 106: Christian Heeb/Laif/Redux. page 114: Preben S. Kristensen/Laif/Redux. page 141: Anson Smart.

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Sentinelese are there, living their ancient lifestyle,

apparently indifferent to

the outside world