The Andaman and Nicobar groups of islands, also known as the Bay islands

 Just as incorrect, though much more flattering, is Claudius Ptolemy’s reference to these islands as being islands of `good fortune’. Maybe, he also believed –as the Dutch did and that is why they once tried to conquer them- that somewhere in these islands `there was a well… whose waters converted iron into gold, and was the true philosopher’s stone.

These islands as being islands of `good fortune’

The Nicobars seem to have got off rather lightly, because through the centuries they have always been referred to only referred to only to only as the land of `the naked people’.

The tribe lives under the threat of extinction in Dugong Creek, their biggest camp in little Andaman.

The Andaman and Nicobar groups of islands, also known as the Bay islands, lie at the foot of the Bay of Bengal between the 6 th and the 14 th parallel. They comprise two distinct chains of islands- Andaman Nicobar.  From the geological point of view, they are the summits of a continuous lofty submarine range of mountains connecting Cape Negrais in Burma with Achin head in Sumitra, in Indonesia. No wonder at one time there was the mistaken belief that at some stage in the past there was surface link between all these islands connecting them with Burma, on the one hand, and with Sumatra, on the other.