Sunderbans Tiger Reserve
Friday morning we left our hotel, stashed our bags and got a taxi over to the Bengal tourist office to catch the tourist bus to the Sunderbans. The city is quite nice without the traffic, even at 8 it’s very quite but an hour later its bedlam.
We got our coach and snoozed a bit for the 3 hours it took to get to the sunderbans.
The Sunderbans are the biggest mangrove forest in the world and it forms the north edge of the Bay of Bengal and continues into Bangladesh.
Its also has the highest percentage of Tigers in the world and most of them are man eaters, honey collectors and fisherman are taken quite often. The water itself has Crocodiles and Bull Sharks in abundance and they also eat a lot of people but no records are kept. The water is brown and they won’t let you put your hand in it!
We got to a sleepy little village with a busy pier. It’s all very clean and green after Kolcata, rice fields and palm trees everywhere. All sorts of human/animal traffic buzzing around.
We took a little boat to our river boat which was pretty big and slept 30 odd people.
We ended up with a cabin to our selves which was cool. It was mostly Bengali tourists so that was cool. Bengalis eat a lot though, we got fed 5 times a day and woken up at 5.30 for Tea, the few westerners were declining but the rest of the boat had Tiffin before dawn.
Lots of big plates of stuff I don’t know what it’s called but very nice, mostly. Every bite was an adventure. We had to start skipping meals.
We stopped after lunch at the first forest station, after a few hours cruising. The walk way in is protected with wire and mesh screens to stop tigers getting in and you walk through the little mesh tunnels everywhere. We saw some Deer and lots of nice trees but no tigers.
We spent the night swatting mosquitoes and chilling out watching some Indian kung fu dancing musical on the VCD player. Chatting with the locals a bit, everyone was very nice.
After our 5 O clock Tea call we went back to sleep for a bit and had some pancakes for breakfast. We did another few stops that day through the park and steams passed Bangladesh.
Same deal with the wire mesh and it was very remote tiger country but the 30 tourists shouting as they approached from far away gave any critters plenty of time to leg it!
But over the 2 days we saw Deer, Bambi, and Dolphin, Wild boar, Monitor, Crocodile, big birds and a Water Viper hunting a fish. Everything but the tiger which was a bit a of a bummer, it was very nice in the end. Nice sunset the second day. That night relaxed on deck and had a chat with a Dutch guy and a Swedish girl who worked in Delhi. Early night.
The Sunday morning we went to one more Tiger camp, managed to get there first and were surrounded by Deer and it was very peaceful and quite: ) Soon the mob showed up though!
We got back on the boat and more eating and talking later we ended up turning back to port. We came back the opposite way we left and had done a big loop of the Mangrove.
We got the bus back to Kolcutta, on the way we were invited to dinner that night by some people who we had met who worked in a children’s home in Kolcatta. They were meeting at a restraunt we meant to go to on top of a 10 story building, best view of the city.
After getting our bags and checking back into our hotel (the black hole as its known) we went over a block to the restraunt. It was very nice and we had a lot of nice food and drink and the setting was really cool, lots of city lights and quite from above. We left after been told it was fine for visitors to go to the children’s home, new life. We got the address and arranged to meet Max, an American worker their on the Tuesday.
The next day we had to check out of our shit hole hotel and by chance got a nice one, the Hotel Hilson (next to the Shilton,billton etc) it was a big old run down British building, very grand but decaying where it stood. We got a big nice room, fairly quite and did laundry, by hand and rested.
We got our coach and snoozed a bit for the 3 hours it took to get to the sunderbans.
The Sunderbans are the biggest mangrove forest in the world and it forms the north edge of the Bay of Bengal and continues into Bangladesh.
Its also has the highest percentage of Tigers in the world and most of them are man eaters, honey collectors and fisherman are taken quite often. The water itself has Crocodiles and Bull Sharks in abundance and they also eat a lot of people but no records are kept. The water is brown and they won’t let you put your hand in it!
We got to a sleepy little village with a busy pier. It’s all very clean and green after Kolcata, rice fields and palm trees everywhere. All sorts of human/animal traffic buzzing around.
We took a little boat to our river boat which was pretty big and slept 30 odd people.
We ended up with a cabin to our selves which was cool. It was mostly Bengali tourists so that was cool. Bengalis eat a lot though, we got fed 5 times a day and woken up at 5.30 for Tea, the few westerners were declining but the rest of the boat had Tiffin before dawn.
Lots of big plates of stuff I don’t know what it’s called but very nice, mostly. Every bite was an adventure. We had to start skipping meals.
We stopped after lunch at the first forest station, after a few hours cruising. The walk way in is protected with wire and mesh screens to stop tigers getting in and you walk through the little mesh tunnels everywhere. We saw some Deer and lots of nice trees but no tigers.
We spent the night swatting mosquitoes and chilling out watching some Indian kung fu dancing musical on the VCD player. Chatting with the locals a bit, everyone was very nice.
After our 5 O clock Tea call we went back to sleep for a bit and had some pancakes for breakfast. We did another few stops that day through the park and steams passed Bangladesh.
Same deal with the wire mesh and it was very remote tiger country but the 30 tourists shouting as they approached from far away gave any critters plenty of time to leg it!
But over the 2 days we saw Deer, Bambi, and Dolphin, Wild boar, Monitor, Crocodile, big birds and a Water Viper hunting a fish. Everything but the tiger which was a bit a of a bummer, it was very nice in the end. Nice sunset the second day. That night relaxed on deck and had a chat with a Dutch guy and a Swedish girl who worked in Delhi. Early night.
The Sunday morning we went to one more Tiger camp, managed to get there first and were surrounded by Deer and it was very peaceful and quite: ) Soon the mob showed up though!
We got back on the boat and more eating and talking later we ended up turning back to port. We came back the opposite way we left and had done a big loop of the Mangrove.
We got the bus back to Kolcutta, on the way we were invited to dinner that night by some people who we had met who worked in a children’s home in Kolcatta. They were meeting at a restraunt we meant to go to on top of a 10 story building, best view of the city.
After getting our bags and checking back into our hotel (the black hole as its known) we went over a block to the restraunt. It was very nice and we had a lot of nice food and drink and the setting was really cool, lots of city lights and quite from above. We left after been told it was fine for visitors to go to the children’s home, new life. We got the address and arranged to meet Max, an American worker their on the Tuesday.
The next day we had to check out of our shit hole hotel and by chance got a nice one, the Hotel Hilson (next to the Shilton,billton etc) it was a big old run down British building, very grand but decaying where it stood. We got a big nice room, fairly quite and did laundry, by hand and rested.
posted by Fionn at 11:23 PM
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