‘Wow! That’s quite a boat you’ve arranged for us, Arjan!’ I exclaim. Arjan smiles weakly. He’s not sure if I really like it. But I really do! And what’s not to like? It’s got a spacious, airy upper deck on which a small table and a few plastic chairs are laid out. This deck is also fully covered from above with a shade that will make sure the sun doesn’t bother us at all. The lower deck has eight beds where we can sleep whenever we want to, in addition to a toilet and sink.
Behind the room with the beds is the engine and the kitchen. And behind that, right at the edge of the stern is another Indian toilet. It empties straight into the water.
The wooden boat is an eight-seater and is like a sardine compared to the metal whale I travelled on to get to Lakshadweep. Being clever Indians, though, we’ve packed it with thirteen people (sixteen including the crew!).
So we’re going to be a little slower but far more economical. This suits me fine. In any case, the eight seater rule only holds true if you’re planning on spending the night in it. We’re not. We’re going to be spending our nights on the Sunderban islands.
I landed in Kolkata the night before the previous night and so far I’ve been enjoying myself. I’ve been invited (or rather, got myself invited!) by Bikram. He’s small, but over the next several days I notice that he has a very regal walk. He’s also got soft, flawless and impeccably combed hair. The kind that could land him a shampoo commercial any day. The regal walk and silky hair coupled with a wispy French beard makes him look like a Mughal emperor. A small Mughal emperor.
But emperor or no emperor, he’s made all the arrangements for my stay so far. He’s also nodded with concern when I’ve told him of my urgent need to visit a shopping mall.
On the first night I’m put up at his new house along with Gauri and his friend Jagdish. I met Gauri about eight years ago when I visited the croc bank in Madras. Since then he’s been working with Romulus Whitaker on King Cobras and has rescued 132 Kings from human habitations till date. He’s also one of the main people responsible for setting up and running Rom’s ARRS (Agumbe Rainforest Research Station) in Karnataka.
For a person who has featured on the National Geographic and Discovery channels, he has not the slightest air about himself. Both he and Jagdesh (Jag) have a sly sense of humour, and by the end of the trip I’m thick as thieves with them.
On my first morning in Kolkata I meet Sajol who takes Gauri, Jag and me for a walk on the outskirts of Kolkata. He’s a minefield of information on butterflies and birds. He doesn’t speak English though. He’s likeable except for his chain-smoking habit. He also eats just about anything and everything!
Then there’s Arjan who treated Gauri, Jag and me at the most amazing Bengali restaurant. I finally eat Hilsa ( Bengal’s most famous fish). I also eat …
‘If only I learnt zoology this way, I’m sure I would have remembered a lot more if I could also taste the animals I was studying!’ I tell Arjan. He laughs uneasily not knowing if I’m serious or joking. He doesn’t know I’m pretty serious!
To get to this boat docked at the mangroves, we’ve had to travel by train for an hour and then an overloaded tempo cum rickshaw for another. I meet the others there. Two of them, Richa and Nilanjan (Neil), will become my constant companions for the rest of the trip. Richa is a frizzy-haired vivacious entrepreneur and Neil is a bespectacled twenty-year-old reptile lover who reminds me of myself when I was his age. Except that he’s a lot smarter and has had far more girlfriends than I ever had!
And then finally there’re the three large roosters we pick up on the way to the boat. They travel in the engine room with us, and everyday the cook will sacrifice one for a lip-smacking meal!
Our boat leaves at around eleven in the morning and chugs slowly along at the average speed of a bicycle. The boat is fitted with a diesel engine, which is fairly noisy but not unbearable. It does rattle your head a bit when you try to sleep on the beds in the lower deck though. The water, I notice, changes in colour from a muddy light brown in shallow areas to a blue grey in deeper areas. Being full of silt it’s never clear.
‘Can we swim in the Sunderbans?’ I ask Neil.
‘Not a good idea…unless you’re willing to get a chunk of your leg bitten off by a bull shark,’ answers Neil.
I scan the banks with my binoculars. Everywhere I look there are mangroves. Some as thick as a rain forest, others sparsely populated like cacti spread out in a desert.
At three in the afternoon we find a small black fishing boat out in the middle of the ocean (actually, we’re not in the ocean—it just seems that way!). They are sorting out fish as they empty their fishing net. Sajol and Arjan jump over and into their boat like pirates and immediately start sifting through the fish booty. Soon they’ve filled up a half a bucket of fish.
‘Fish for you Rahul! Now, are you happy?’ he shouts.
‘How much did it cost?’ I ask Bikram.
‘Oh, he charged us 200 rupees for that fish.’ says Bikram pointing to a silvery fish in the bucket. ‘The bombay duck,’ he said, pointing to a pinkish fish in the same bucket, ‘he gave us for free’. I couldn’t believe it! It was over ten kilos of fresh fish!
By five in the evening, we were nearing our destination. We were now going even slower. It was a good time to spot birds. Loads of waders were pecking around in the exposed mud banks. A forest officer who accompanied us was especially good at identifying them. I struggled with the way he pronounced the names though. Still I knew I was looking at curlews, wimbrels, widgeons, gulls, godwits, adjutant storks, cormorants and plovers. I didn’t write down the names so don’t ask me which species!
I remember the black capped kingfisher in detail though. There were quite a few of them there. The sun goes down much earlier in Kolkata compared to Goa in the month of November, when I made the trip. By six, it was completely dark. Fortunately, we had finally reached our destination.
It was a mangrove island, which would have been great to explore by night, were it not for the fact that only a fraction of it was open to exploring. The reason for this was that tigers prowl this island and readily prey on unsuspecting humans. A few acres have therefore been fenced off with a thick mesh about two meters high. The forest department base with the watch tower stands within the cordoned-off area. This formula of caging humans and keeping the tigers free is used on many of the other Sunderban islands.
Within the same enclosure are two large tents with attached bathrooms. Each has at least about ten beds inside and it was in the tents that we stayed for the next two nights.
I hit the bed early the first night. Like everyone else, I had woken up at four in the morning to catch the train. And like everyone else, I was going to have to get up at four again the next morning. Our destination the next day would be an island on the southern edge of the Sunderbans called Lothian island.
In terms of kilometres, Lothian island isn’t that far away, possibly not more than sixty kilometres from where we had stayed the first night. But on the slow boat it took us more than eight hours to get there.
When you look at a map of the Bay of Bengal you can see that the Sunderbans are a collection of islands. The Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers empty into this vast delta, mixing fresh water and silt with the salt water of the ocean.
What the map doesn’t tell you is that the islands all look the same from the boat. How our boatman managed to find his way around them, I don’t know. What the map also won’t tell you is that many of the channels we were navigating through are not set in stone. Thanks to the phenomenal difference of several metres between the high and low tide levels, vast sandbanks can suddenly disappear and reappear in the space of only a few hours. As a result, a channel deep enough to negotiate through one way might not allow us to pass through on the return journey later that same day. Then, one has to either find an alternate route or wait till the tide fills the place again.
The word Sunderbans literally means ‘Beautiful Forest’. Bikram though tells me that the name Sunderban comes from the Sunderi tree which is a kind of mangrove that grows on this island. But whatever the name may mean, I’ll be honest and say that the Sunderbans isn’t my cup of tea.
Here’s the thing. I come from Goa and have seen mangroves and explored them many times. I can tell you that mangroves are not impressive plants to look at. But they are truly impressive in their capacity to survive in a constantly changing ecosystem—where surviving means anchoring, growing, and reproducing in lands both flooded and sun-baked twice a day. Where silt constantly deposited by the rivers packs the ground so tight that the only way to breath is to send breathing roots bursting out of the ground. Yes, very impressive indeed, when you understand how these extraordinary plants survive. But like I’ve already mentioned, as a Goon, I’ve ‘been there and done that.’
What I haven’t seen though are tigers living in mangroves. Tigers as a species are extremely adaptable, but no where else do they live as much on the edge as in the Sunderbans. The Sunderbans tiger is notorious for being an extremely clever and wily creature, who will not hesitate to prey on a tribal collecting firewood or honey in the forest. When the locals figured out that tigers always grab their prey behind the neck they started wearing masks at the back of their heads. It wasn’t long before the tiger figured out the dummy heads and rendered that trick obsolete. Clever indeed!
The Sunderbans tiger is also extremely catholic in its diet, taking anything from a crab to a deer. One was recently documented having fed on a King Cobra!
In the three days I’m there I never see the wily animal, though. From what I gather most people see one after it’s already chewing on their neck!
I could definitely do without a spotting like that! But when I step onto Lothian island I not only see no traces of the tiger, I don’t see any saltwater crocodiles or monitor lizards either. I remember seeing quite a few salties and monitor lizards when I travelled to Bhitarkonica over ten years ago.
This does not surprise me as much as it disappoints me. The mangrove is thick and I’m sure there are animals hidden all around me. Besides I am able to explore only a small section of it by walking along a man-made ridge running through the forest. On either side of the ridge is mangrove muck. Even if you are a most serious scientist you won’t get more than eleven steps through this knee-deep sinking bog before you decide you’re better off switching to exploring some other ecosystem!
I walk for about a kilometre along the ridge and then turn back. The others, including my faithful companions Richa and Neil continue. I go back to photographing mudskippers and the brilliantly coloured Fiddler crabs that are ten to a square meter on this island. Fiddler crabs are comical. The males have only one huge pincer (I noticed most were right handed) which they wave around trying to intimidate other males and apparently sometimes to impress females. The much smaller second pincer works continuously on the ground finding morsels of food in the sediment.
When the others come back, I find that they’ve not fared much better. They’ve found a few shed skins and seen one checkered keelback.
It’s the second day of the trip and by now everyone considers me the laziest person of the group. So they’re not at all surprised to find me napping on the boat. Only Richa tries to provoke me into getting up. She’s unsuccessful.
That night, as our boatman navigates the channels in the darkness with only the stars to guide him, I sit with Gauri and discuss my Sunderbans trip. He tells me that it isn’t his cup of tea either.
So we both know we aren’t coming back. But I’m still glad I came. I’ve wanted to visit Sunderbans since I was a kid. Ever since I heard about the man eating tigers that lived there. And after all those years, I finally made it. And in style—on a boat cruising the night through shark and crocodile-infested waters. Some great company on board and a belly fully of fried fish. Contentment indeed!
