A Dispatch From an Endangered Bird’s ‘Garden of Eden’

By the end of 2019, I was ready for a change of scenery. Working as a natural history photographer, I’d spent the previous two years tracking snow leopards in the Himalayas. Then, one snowy afternoon, I received a brief call from Dr. Rohit Naniwadekar, a bird biologist with the Nature Conservation Foundation. He asked me to get to a small volcanic island in the northern Andaman Sea as quickly as I possibly could.

Within a week, I had swapped the seemingly endless landlocked mountains for a tiny speck of land at the edge of the world.

Narcondam Island, a designated wildlife sanctuary where Dr. Naniwadekar planned to conduct his research, gives new meaning to the word “remote.” Situated about 80 miles to the east of the main spine of the Andaman Islands and totaling only about 2.6 square miles (twice the size of Central Park), Narcondam is a dense green volcanic mountain peeking out of the deep blue water. To date, exceedingly few scientists and natural history photographers have set foot on its uninhabited beaches.

Getting to Narcondam, which is part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, wasn’t easy. After gaining the proper government permits, we caught a flight from mainland India to the Andaman Islands — straightforward enough. But that was followed by a long night in rough seas to reach Narcondam. Moreover, the island does not have a docking or soft landing option, so we had to jump into tiny rubber boats and fight the waves before disembarking. We were drenched from head to toe.