Day 93, Sunderbans [Tuesday 4th March 2008]
Previous day: Day 92, Sunderbans [Monday 3rd March 2008]
Next day: Day 94, Sunderbans [Wednesday 5th March 2008]
We get a 6.30am wake up call, followed by 'bed tea' delivered to the room — a thermos of hot, sweet masala chai and a plate of salty biscuits! Then we get on the boat and go on a long, 6 hour cruise along the wide, still waters of the Sunderbans. It's not a particularly pretty landscape — endless miles of mangrove forest edging onto claggy, wet, grey mud. The water is cloudy, milky and forbidding. But journeying along its endless hannels is hypnotic. Mile after mile of shoreline drifts by, endless cycles of sunshine and dramatic tides alternately drying and cracking the exposed mud and partially rehydrating it into a sticky mess.
We don't see any other boats for the whole day. We're on the water alone (the unsees eyes of over 200 tigers presumably blinking back at us from the darkness of the mangroves.) We see lots of bright blue kingfishers, including an apparently rare 'brown winged' kingfisher. We also see crocodiles, jellyfish and a couple of dolphins. These dolphins have round faces instead of the usual long snout.
As the hours go by it becomes clear quite how extensive the Sunderbans park is — we have only patrolled about a quarter of it, at most. The water channels are hundreds of metres wide. It's not at all like the maze of tiny nstreams and passages we were expecting, although we are in quite a big boat. With some trepidation we peer into the grey murk of recently exposed streams and gullies. The honey gatherers, victims of so many tiger attacks as they try to sustan their livelihoods, wear helmets with eyes painted on the rear, in an often futile attempt at convincing a hungry, menacing tiger that they can see them coming and are ready for them.
We take a look around the local village, and later, with coffee and snacks, we watch a DVD about life in the Sunderans. Narrated by an overwhelming, booming American voice, it stars one of our guides as he recounts surviving a tiger attack. It's a chilling reminder of the dangers experienced every day here. It also attempts to explain why so many tigers here are man eaters — scarcity of food, the salt-water diet, a historical lack of hunting giving htem no ingrained fear of man. But no one really knows why.
Next day: Day 94, Sunderbans [Wednesday 5th March 2008]
Previous day: Day 92, Sunderbans [Monday 3rd March 2008]