Tangents
The Sundarbans <i>Diary</i>
Osprey and half a Fish. Photo: Ihtisham Kabir
Wednesday January 18: Noon. Leave Dhaka with friends on train bound for The Sundarbans. At 10pm, the train arrives in Khulna where we spend the night. Thursday January 19: 6:30am. Board Guide Tours' launch MV Aboshor. Wait a few hours for passengers arriving by another train. Aboshor carries fourteen crewmembers. Passengers include foreigners from Austria, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Switzerland, Thailand and the UK, and forty Bangladeshis. 1:00pm. Depart for Mongla cruising the Bhairab river. See duck formations and fleeting dolphins. 2:30pm. Past Mongla, launch enters The Sundarbans, my second time here. Landscape and vegetation change gradually. After Shoronkhola (forest permit formalities) we turn into a narrower river as the forest builds up on both sides. 3pm. We spot our first wildlife, a crocodile sunning on the bank, and approach for a closer look with engine off. Crocodile gives us three minutes before ending the show and sliding into the water. Later, another crocodile bares its teeth before disappearing underwater. 4pm. An osprey flies from the riverbank carrying a half-eaten fish in its talons. Ospreys are legendary fish-eaters: He'll be to RomeAs is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature. (Shakespeare, Coriolanus) 5pm. Boat anchors for night at Kotka. Friday January 20: 7 am. Bird-watching trip aboard a smaller boat. We enter a side canal, engine off, current carrying us. A thick, palpable mist envelopes everything, creating an enchanted land. Branches reach over the water at odd angles, giant golpata flowers resemble prehistoric fossils, dome-shaped cobwebs hang from kankra branches and mangrove roots protrude in all shapes and sizes. We see a Lesser Adjutant, a woodpecker, kingfishers, herons, a bhimraj, deer and a jungle-fowl. 10am. Walk 2.5km to Kotka beach, crossing an open space dotted with boroi trees resembling giant mushrooms with perfectly even bottom. Deer have “pruned” them uniformly at the height they can reach. 11:30am. Sudden movement atop a tall beachside gewa tree: a kingfisher swoops sixty feet across the beach into water, catches its fish, and returns to the tree, all in about five seconds. How did it see its prey from so far? 1:30pm. While returning to boat, we see a kalo guishap (water monitor) sunning itself. Its languid eyes watch us, unafraid. 3pm. From deck we watch deer and monkeys playing on the bank against a backdrop of bright green possur trees. 4:00pm. Another boat ride for bird-watching on a clear afternoon. An otter family on the bank was preparing to cross the canal. Seeing us they return to the forest, emerging at a safer distance, and cross underwater. We also see shikre and plover birds and a wild boar. 7:00pm. Thick fog complicates navigation of our launch. I keep an eye on the life-vests until my friend points out they are useless in crocodile-infested waters. Fog forces launch to anchor early. Saturday January 21
Morning. After hiking the boardwalk at Harbaria, where we see fresh tiger pugmarks on the mud and bright red fiddler crabs, we return to Mongla. Goodbye, beautiful Sundarban.
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