The boatman cut the engine a hundred metres from shore and let the tide do the rest. Ahead of us, a strip of sand no wider than a cricket pitch held a church, eleven palms and a village that the sea redraws every monsoon.
We had come to see one of India's disappearing islands — low sandbars off the coast that shrink a little more each year. The charts say one thing, the fishermen say another, and the shoreline itself changes its mind with every full moon. What follows is three days of walking a beach that may not exist in a decade, and what it taught us about travelling to fragile places.
Day one: reading the tide
Our host, Joseph, has fished these waters for thirty years and navigates by landmarks that no longer exist — a chapel that fell in 2016, a well that turned salty in 2019. He times everything by the tide table chalked on the boathouse wall. "You don't fight the water here," he told us. "You ask what it allows today."
We walked the full length of the island in forty minutes, counting turtle nests marked with palm-frond crosses. Eleven. Each one guarded by a volunteer roster from the village, each one a small argument that this place is worth more than the sand it stands on.
"You don't fight the water here. You ask what it allows today."
— JOSEPH, FISHERMAN & GUIDE
Day two: the village that moves
Twice in living memory the village has picked up its houses and walked inland. Walls are built to be dismantled; the church travels in numbered stones. Nobody we met spoke of the erosion with despair — it was weather, and weather is negotiated with, not mourned. But the young people leave for the mainland, and every departure makes the next move harder.
We spent the afternoon mending nets and learning, badly, to throw a cast net. In the evening the whole beach gathered for a fish fry cooked over driftwood, and someone produced a drum. Fragile places, it turns out, throw the best parties.
How to visit without harming it
- —Stay in the village homestays, not mainland resorts. Every rupee should land here.
- —Come in the dry months (October to March) when the beach is widest and nesting is over.
- —Carry out everything you carry in, including food wrappers the wind loves.
- —Hire a local boat, never a speedboat day-trip. The wake erodes more than the tide.
