In the Andamans - with 2% internet

04/06/17

It’s five in the evening and it’s pouring. I’m seated in a dimly lit cottage inside ANET (Andaman and Nicobar Environmental Team) with three dogs curled up under the table and the smell of wet mud and wood filling the air. The sounds around me are a cocktail of raindrops falling on broad leaves, pond water, slushy mud and tin roofing. The trees are vibrant, as though tweaked for maximum contrast, with their dark, damp barks glistening against a palette of greens. It is mucky, icky, noisy beauty.

When I first came to the Andamans two months ago, my stomach was tingling with pure, unhindered excitement. I had no expectations, I simply knew I’d love whatever I found once we landed. I was right – I was met by more raw nature than I’ve been exposed to in the past. I realized that wilderness isn’t defined by the animals that one finds or how densely forested a place is. It’s defined by how unhabituated to people and civilization, how removed from familiarity, and how untouched a place and its biodiversity is. The Andamans is that place. A place that’s been changing and interacting with humanity for years, yet a place that maintains a tinge of feral within it. I went away feeling like the land tamed the people there, rather than the other way around, despite its growing villages and towns.

Today, I set off for ANET once more, but this time, my stomach was in knots. Knots of twisted excitement. This time, I had expectations, and worries about whether they’d be met. I embarked on this trip as a reconnaissance survey, to pursue a couple of research ideas for my Masters’ thesis. Now, I have to learn how to focus on a research question and on how to answer it in addition to gawking at the place I’m in. Seated in my plane, the glistening blue waters that shone at me didn’t help my gastric symphony of buzzing bees. After two months of craving, ideation and dreaming, I was going back again – hoping to find enough potential and purpose to keep going back.

The trip from the airport to ANET was familiar and greener than when I last remembered. More fields seemed waterlogged now that the monsoons had arrived, despite the patchy rain over the last few days. I was taking turns in my head before we made them, and was pleased to know I still knew my whereabouts from the last visit. When the car pulled up outside ANET, my knots untied and I immediately relaxed. There’s something about the calm of this place that prohibits worry. Crusoe, Tweemo and Tweepa – the dogs of ANET – greeted me heartily, and in that moment, I knew I had only good things to look forward to.

I’ll close now and watch the light fade.