If Ross Island could talk...
Have you ever wondered what your city, your town or the world would be like if no one lived in it? There are places on our planet that serve as a reflection to answer this question, one of them is the ross island , abandoned in the Indian Ocean, and where nature has slowly taken over each of its corners.
The roots of trees and wild plants climb and entangle themselves in what were the buildings of this small former British colony in 1957 , and that previously had been an impenetrable jungle located in the bay of bengal , Come in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India, with an isolated group of 572 tropical islands. But what has happened since then?
Travel photographer Neelima Vallangi has been photographing extreme places in the world for many magazines and publications for years. Working for the BBC was she when she ran into the Ross Island.
It can only be visited during the day.
“Although Ross Island is a popular detour in the Andaman Islands, I almost skipped it due to lack of information. The situation has improved a lot now and the tourist board has made efforts to inform and advertise the tragic but fascinating story of the ghost island which the forest is slowly taking over," Neelima explains to Traveler.es
"Towards the end of my weeks of traveling through the Andaman Islands, I landed on Ross Island, and once there, it was clear to me that it was not an ordinary island ".
Neelima was photographing this living landscape, but unarmed at the same time, while she found out her terrible story. Although these islands are a paradise for their forests and beaches, the island was used as a prison from 1857 to 1945 , when it was dismantled with the end of World War II, the invasion of Japanese troops and the subsequent indian independence.
It was abandoned in the 1940s.
The island turned out to be a strategic location for the British Army in the Indian Ocean because it is located near the port of Andaman Island. The British used it as a settlement for Indian convicts after the successive rebellions that started in India in 1957. During those years she brutally tortured and experimented on them.
In fact it was they themselves who made the island habitable, and when it expanded, the British built luxurious houses, tennis courts and even a power plant (now devoured by the earth) .
“It was a hair-raising experience walking through the ruins of a colony that has lived through horrendous crimes on convicts for decades. The overgrown trees added an ominous feel to the entire island and isolation from your surroundings is chilling ”, confesses Neelima to Traveler.es.
The photographer captured the most emblematic buildings on the island for a few hours : the remains of a bakery, a water treatment plant, the Presbyterian church, the English commissioner's bungalows, the officers' ballroom, the hospital and its cemetery.
This island measures 0.3 square kilometers.
ross island was finally uninhabited in the late 1940s when an earthquake hit it leaving it in tatters.
Until in 1979 the Indian government took control over it, and years later, it became a tourist attraction, although only brief visits are allowed during the day to keep its nature intact.
The island was a convict settlement before it was abandoned.