Inside ‘idiot’ tourist’s meticulous plan to visit isolated tribe that was a massive fail
An American tourist who entered a restricted remote Indian island home to a dangerous tribe and left a can of Coke had attempted the venture two other times.
YouTuber Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, was arrested earlier this week after reaching North Sentinel Island and leaving a coconut with a can of Coca-Cola on the beach.
It may sound like a harmless venture, but the island is home to the Sentinelese tribe and has previously killed outsiders.
The indigenous tribe have called the islands, more than 700 miles from India’s mainland, home for 60,000 years. Other nearby tribes include the Onge, Shompens, Great Andamanese and Jarwa.
It’s now been revealed that Polyakov first tried to reach the isolated territory in October last year with an inflatable kayak – but was stopped by hotel staff.
In January, he attempted the venture yet again but only reached the Baratang Islands, home to another indigenous tribe called the Jarawa.
There, he illegally filmed the community before leaving. His third attempt, this week, was successful.
Police said it was ‘meticulously planned’. He remained on the island for around five minutes, blowing a whistle in a bid to get attention.
When he returned to the mainland, police stopped him, seizing his GoPro footage which apparently showed him claiming ‘representation of the US’ on the island.
Photos released of Polyakov reveal him to have travelled to other countries, including visiting the Taliban and posing with guns.
He reportedly posted on his YouTube, under the name ‘Neo-Orientalist’, referencing an orientalist thinking that the West is ‘more advanced’ than other cultures, such as the Middle East – it gained popularity after 9/11.
Why is the area restricted?
The Sentinelese have not assimilated with the outside world for the 60,000 years they’ve spent on their island.
The tribe is primitive, using hand-made canoes and bows and arrows to ward off any unwanted visitors.
This unwanted contact with the world might stem from an encounter in 1880, when a Royal Navy officer, Maurice Vidal Portman, landed on Sentinel Island.
They reportedly found abandoned villages, with locals having fled to the interior of the island to avoid the settlers – but children and an elderly couple ‘lagged behind’, and were captured and taken to Port Blair.
They became sick, likely from pathogens they had no defence against, given they were isolated for tens of thousands of years. It seems this encounter may have made the Sentinelese more wary of outsiders.
A prisoner who escaped in a makeshift raft in the late 1800s washed up onshore, and his body was found with arrows in it and his throat was slit.
Perhaps the closest the outside world has got to making friends with the tribe was through regular visits by a team of anthropologists led by Trinok Nath Pandit.
The group began visiting the island in 1967 and continued to do so for decades. Pandit and his team would drop gifts off: from a pig to toys, metal pots and pans and coconuts.
Although the pig got killed and buried, and the toys also laid to rest in the sand, the Sentinelese developed a penchant for coconuts, and seemed to appreciate the pans.
In November 2018, American missionary John Allen Chau then attempted to visit the island to convert them to Christianity.
The tribe chased him away twice, but on his third attempt, it’s believed he was killed.
The fishermen who had taken Chau near to the island saw tribe members dragging a body along the beach and burying it.
Chau wrote in his journal (which was left behind) that he felt the North Sentinel was ‘Satan’s last stronghold’, frustrated he hadn’t had a warm welcome.
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