An American tourist set off alone last week on an inflatable boat for the remote island of North Sentinel in the Indian Ocean. He had packed a Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering for the highly isolated tribe that lives there, and had brought along a GoPro camera in hopes of filming the encounter, the Indian police said.

       Guided by his GPS navigation, the man, Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, reached the northeastern shore of the island at 10 a.m. on March 29, according to the police. He scanned the land with binoculars, but saw no one. So he climbed ashore, left the Diet Coke and the coconut there, took sand samples, and recorded a video, the police said.

       Mr. Polyakov was arrested on March 31 when he returned to Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago more than 800 miles east of India’s mainland, the authorities said.

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       Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, was arrested after visiting the remote island of North Sentinel in the Indian Ocean.Credit...Andaman and Nicobar police

       Few outsiders have been to the island of North Sentinel, which is a territory of India and is illegal to visit. Indian government regulations prohibit any outsider interaction with its isolated tribe, whose members hunt with bow and arrow and have killed intruders for stepping onto their shore.

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       In 2018, an American missionary, John Allen Chau, set off for the island with a Bible. He was shot with bows and arrows by tribesmen when he got onshore, the Indian authorities later said. Fishermen who helped take Mr. Chau to North Sentinel told the police that they had seen tribesmen dragging his body on the beach.

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