The Sundarbans

Mangrove Trees

A boat floating down the river

One of the monkeys on the shore near our boat

A picture of the village that we stayed in

Me with a monkey

This weekend our study abroad group took an excursion to the Sundarbans. For those of you who don't know what the Sundarbans are, they are a large mangrove forest that stretches across over 7,000 km of India and Bangladesh. Mangrove trees have roots that run deep into the water and on the surface it looks like many trees scattered in a row, when in actuality it is one large tree with an intricate root system. We headed out very early in the morning on the bus and most of us just slept the whole way there, but upon arriving, we all climbed into the boat and took off cruising along the waterways of the Sundarbans.

There are many exciting animals to see in the Sundarbans but it is most famous for its Bengal tigers that inhabit the area. Every so often we would stop at a tiger viewing area and get out of the boat to explore around the fenced areas for tigers and other indigenous animals. The probability of seeing a tiger is actually rather slim because the area that they can be found in is so vast and there are only a few hundred of them left in this area.

Upon getting out at our first tiger reserve sighting area, we saw tons of monkeys roaming along the sand and in the nearby trees. We took many pictures of the monkeys because you could get sooo close to them. At one of the stops we decided to take our picture with one and he got rather testy and howled at Steph and started biting his arm to warn her to back away or he would take a nice chunk out of her arm (Steph ran out of there pretty fast...good thing I got my rabies shots!) Some other animals that we were lucky enough to see were a monitor lizard, numerous birds, a red junglefowl (sorry that I wasn't fast enough to take a picture Chuhu), crocodiles, cows, ducks, and deer. At one point on the first day we were cruising along and we saw a group of monkeys on the shore. One of the guides, who was using his binoculars started shouting about a tiger right behind the monkeys. I had seen a flash of orange but I had just assumed that it was a rather large monkey and everyone else had thought this as well. After the tiger spotting we stopped at one of the fenced-in spotting areas to see if we could spot the tiger again because the men who work for the forest reserve wanted to make sure that the tiger did not come into the surrounding village and decide to eat anyone.

After spending a long time looking at deer, birds, and monkeys, and not spotting the tiger, we hopped in the boat and went down the river to the village that we stayed at during the night. We stayed in a hotel in a nearby village where many of the huts had thatched roofs and the people herded their goats along the side of the road. Our hotel was nice and had what we refer to as "western toilets" in every room and large wooden beds, similar to the ones that we slept in at Shantiniketan. During the night the locals would put on performances with singing and dancing, but we mainly just told scary stories and played games during the night. The second night we were there a couple of us had a yoga session with our program director, Sucharita. I miss doing yoga from my days when I used to dance, so this was something fun that everyone who participated enjoyed.

In the mornings they would wake us up with what people in India refer to as bed tea (literally it is tea in bed). After finishing our tea we would go down to breakfast and have puri (my favorite Indian thing to eat...it is fried dough) and honey. The Sundarbans is famous for its honey as well and I found out that many people who collect honey wear masks on the back of their heads so tigers won't try to sneak up behind them. Many of my fellow students were disappointed that they couldn't sleep on the boat but we had heard that a few days before we arrived in the Sundarbans, a man had been dragged off a boat during the middle of the night and eaten by a tiger (the tigers there can swim up to 8 km down the river). Needless to say, it was not safe for us to stay on the boat so we just relaxed during the time we were given. I had lots of fun hanging out and joking with Sucharita and I even got a little burnt on the trip (it is tan now, which will probably only last a few days). All in all our trip was very relaxing and we learned a lot about the Sundarbans.