India
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island (Ross Island)
A British colonial headquarters slowly being digested by ficus roots in the Andaman Sea.
The ballroom ceiling has caved in, and banyan roots have split the church walls. Spotted deer wander what was once the administrative headquarters of the British Andamans. Ross Island is a ten-minute ferry from the harbour and a century of decay from its imperial prime.
Ross Island ran the British penal colony in the Andamans from the 1850s until a 1941 earthquake and the Japanese occupation ended it. The British built a commissioner's residence, church, printing press, bakery, swimming pool and ballroom — all now being dismantled from within by ficus and banyan roots — and the Japanese left bunkers in the undergrowth. Deer and peacocks roam the ruins under official protection, ferried visitors their only interruption. The mainland harbour town, Port Blair, now carries the name Sri Vijaya Puram.
Solo
Take the first ferry, walk the loop before the heat, and let the banyans narrate the empire's end.
Couple
An unhurried loop between the roots and ruins, deer for company, back for a seafood lunch.
Friends
A concise half-day — ferry over, ruins and bunkers, lunch back at the harbour.
- A ballroom, a church, a printing press and a pool — all being eaten by roots in slow motion.
- Japanese bunkers and tunnels still hide beneath the undergrowth.
- The deer own the island now, unbothered by the day's few visitors.
- Ten minutes on a ferry buys a century's worth of abandonment.
The island itself runs to a snack shop — carry water and eat properly back across the strait.
In Sri Vijaya Puram the fish curry comes coconut-milk rich, and the reef lobster is landed hours old.
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