Finding Shangri-La
Kia Koropp and family discover the Chagos Islands – a kind of Eden in the Indian Ocean with a darker history
A cruise to the exotic Chagos islands
We’ve had the incredible fortune of being able to spend time in the mid-oceanic archipelago of Chagos in the Indian Ocean, and I’ve seen my first – and probably my only – sight of the long-forgotten world I’ve always dreamed of. Other than a few fallen ruins, it’s untouched by human development and offers a sanctuary like no other on earth for the myriad creatures which inhabit this remote, abandoned archipelago.
In this blessed parallel universe, the sea holds a healthy balance of marine life and a visitor can cavort with a wide diversity of marine animals. Here, the wildlife doesn’t seem so wild after all. They seem curious, trusting, innocent, friendly. Our time in Chagos allows me to understand what a modern day Shangri-La it truly is. Not only for what it is today, but also for what it might not be tomorrow.
Abundant wildlife
It’s hard to describe the constant assault of wildlife experiences. It’s hard to choose what to relay of the experience to a bystander – what collection of moments out of the multitude of events is adequate to portray the whole picture? My attempt to do this is expressed through the unique experiences we had with the animals that are found in Chagos, both above and below the sea; in doing so, perhaps I can pass on a glimmer of the unique beauty that is Chagos.
Reef shark, turtles, eels, rays, coconut crabs and sea birds all made a debut during our stay and each left an undeniable impression. Black tip reef sharks shadowed us every time we went into the water, their streamlined and sleek bodies a sinister threat. I was initially wary, but we soon became accustomed to their continual presence. They followed us like puppies: curious, eager, attentive. Our fear soon dissipated and I welcomed them as you would a family pet. Swinging in my hammock, I’d watch them patiently circle around our hull. Driving our dinghy, we were constantly followed by a trail of black tips breaking the surface behind us. We jumped into the water and played in the shallows as they circled around our feet, the occasional feel of sandpaper brushing past our flesh.
Turtles also kept us in regular company. We’d find a rivet of a turtle track and follow it until it led us to newly-laid nests. Terns squawked when we disturbed their silent congregation and frigate birds swooped from their perches to breeze past our heads. Once, I captured that spectacular moment when a fish caught in the grip of a frigate bird dropped from the sky to its freedom. I have a bird at the top of the photo, a mid-air fish in the middle, and water far below.
Spotted eagle rays and giant stingrays would bask in the warmth of the shallow water, and we’d spend our days sledding our feet towards them, trying not to stumble into the large ditches they’d
carved into the sand. They could disappear in the blink of an eye, but often let us approach. They were large pale 2m-long dishes with wings that would shift a circle of sand to camouflage themselves and put pockmarks the flat seabed around us. One step too close and in a flick they were gone.
We spent our time watching moray eels hunt in the shallow crevices, crammed into tight nooks in the rock. Nearby, a half dozen crabs would be scurrying about on the wet sand. Quick as a flash a moray eel ripped the arm off one and darted inches past my toes. As I backed away, I stumbled into a small tidal pool behind me and looked down to find a half dozen pint-sized black tip reef shark, beautiful new entrants into this world.
Bird nests crowned the trees with hatchlings tucked in their wooden cradles and we tiptoed quietly through a booby-bird sanctuary. I always had an audience. Thirty beaks, yellow eyes curious, would turn towards me as I wandered under the branches.
I slipped into shallow water once, trying to get a better look and a shadow caught my attention. I turned to see a shark lazily swim past and as I waded out further, I sidestepped a giant ray and, in doing so, bumped my shin into a passing turtle. Where in the world can you wander through such an array of different creatures all in one step?
Back on our yacht, the wildlife was always coming to us. Terns would rest on Atea’s bowsprit with their delicate feathered features, casual and unperturbed by my approach. Reef fish would school under our hull, attracted to our protection and the shade, ever hopeful for the occasional scrap. Sharks continued their endless loop around our hull and turtles would slowly idle past. Ping. Ping. Ping. Like dominoes, gilled and feathered inhabitants of Chagos dropping past us in quick succession.
Perhaps this is the crux of it. It is not one unique encounter, but encounter on top of encounter on top of encounter that makes the experiences in Chagos so unique.
What to do?
Other than sitting around all day with our mouths agape and our eyes open wide, you could ask, “What did you do all day?” My son, Braca, who six months ago would not put his head in the water of the hotel swimming pool, is now jumping and frolicking in the water, twisting and turning like a fish, snorkelling without a lifejacket and asking to be pushed down to the reef for a closer look. My daughter Ayla has similarly progressed, and while less proficient than her brother, is fearless and will happily paddle off into the blue water calling out “I’m fine!” as the black tip shark circle curiously around us.
Our afternoons contain some degree of boat jobs and schoolwork, but otherwise we sought to break established routines to maximise our time together. We made bonfires on the beach, fished for our dinner, ate on deck watching the bloom of stars overhead. We had disco nights and games nights, dinner parties and birthday parties all for a party of four.
Chagos offered time as a family unfiltered and uncomplicated by outside influence. We had no access to news of
the outside world and no other distractions from a distance: no internet, television or phones.
Island history
I don’t know if we will ever again walk Chagos shores, but if we do I’m sure it will not be the place it is today. To understand this impending sense of change, one has to understand recent political history.
While Chagos was once like so many other island nations, inhabited by a small local population and supported by subsistence living, life changed in 1968 when international politics saw the local population deported to Mauritius, the Seychelles and other distant territories. A 1966 agreement between the British and American governments stipulated that all inhabitants be removed from the territory for the instalment of a US military base on Diego Garcia. The British, then in command of the archipelago, agreed.
The forced eviction of 1,500 people from Diego Garcia and the six other atolls that form the British Indian Ocean Territory was completed in 1973. Since then there has been a volley of lawsuits, compensation claims and resettlement petitions that have been won and overturned in the battle between human rights violations and political interests.
In 2010 the British government established a marine nature reserve protecting the world’s largest coral area (544,000km2), creating the largest swathe of protected territory ever established. The establishment of this reserve, however, became embroiled in heated debate when Wikileaks released documents that linked it to a tactical move to restrict the return of Chagossians to their native land.
The end of 2016 marked the end of the 50-year agreement, but the contract will automatically extend 20 years if neither side chooses to terminate it.
That said, resettlement claims by the Chagossians and reclamation demands by the Mauritian Prime Minister complicate matters; the fate of Chagos continues to be played out in the battlefield of international politics.
Conflicting feelings
I stand out of the dispute, morally caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between human rights and ecological conservation. Walking amid the ruins you can’t help but feel for the people who’d been expelled.
In 2006 previous inhabitants of the Salomon atoll were permitted a short visitation and a cross was erected and dedicated to the memory of ancestors buried on the island. Standing in front of it you can’t help but feel the injustice. I understand the need for humans to belong to a place, and in society ancestral ties play a significant role in defining that culture. The removal of the Chagossians from their native land strips them of this basic ethnic foundation.
I also appreciate the irony of being granted permission to visit a land that the indigenous population is banned from re-entering. While visitors are not permitted to enter any of the British Indian Ocean Territories, a private yacht sailing across the Indian Ocean may apply for a permit to enter two of the seven atolls that makes up the Chagos archipelago.
Only a handful of these applications are approved each year – if you can’t get there yourself, you can’t get there at all. If you do get permission to visit, there are only four approved anchorages within the 60 tropical islands.
Yet, despite the injustice of the islanders exclusion, I’m awed by the experience of witnessing the Eden of an ecosystem devoid of human interference. Reading the accounts of sailors from the antiquities, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to see the oceans teeming with life as reported in their journals.
Today, the ocean offers seafarers a barren desert. Chagos has given me a looking glass into a world we have denied ourselves. It is the epitome of a cruiser’s ideal destination: remote, pristine and beautiful. That we were able to experience it without any other cruisers merely amplified these traits and made the isolation absolute.