The Green Ogre: Sunderbans

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Sundarbans Diary - Oh Calcutta!

Jennifer Nandi bids goodbye to the Sundarbans and acclimates to civilisation as she traipses the streets of crowded Kolkata

The famous bridge over the Hooghly River in Kolkata

January 12 - Leaving for Kolkata

During the three-hour-cruise to the jetty, from where we will be transferred by car to Kolkata, we are surprised by thousands of ducks - hundreds of Wigeon and Tufted Ducks on open water, and Lesser Whistling Teal huddled against the comparative safety of the reeds. Our eyes devour these sights of the Sundarbans - a landscape full of colour and incident for the vigilant visitor.

Ferrying hay in the Sundarbans - note the toilet at the back of the boat

Sadly, the Sundarbans are also the recipient of eroded topsoil and silt. In their downward flow from the Himalayan regions, rivers and streams -- the primary agents of soil erosion -- drain the Himalayas, eroding large quantities of soil in their upper courses. During the monsoon, unsorted sediments clog reservoirs, turbines and irrigation works and are deposited over agricultural fields and settlements by the swollen rivers. As the sun's intense radiation accelerates the rate at which snow melts in the uplands, the increased erosion causes water levels to rise to flood proportions, sweeping away unwary people and animals.

In fact, Nepal exports to India the one commodity that it can least afford to part with – its topsoil. This affects the lives and property of several hundred million people in Gangetic India and Bangladesh. The Bay of Bengal is the eventual sink for this sediment. The Bengal Fan, at over 20 km thick, is one of the thickest accumulations of sediment in the world. Indeed much of the country of Bangladesh is built on top of the fan, which lies on top of the oceanic crust. Truly, in the face of deforestation, the rivers wash our future into the sea.

Our 3-hour drive back to Kolkata feels like, according to Ken, a Kamikaze run! Too much frenetic traffic, too many people, too many obstacles that should never have been on the road! Warmly embraced by the hospitality of the Oberoi Grand Hotel, we luxuriate in it till early evening when we set out to buy books and, in general, to gad around the city streets. We pass on the option of eating elsewhere, so happy are we with the fare at the Oberoi Grand.

After our sojourn in the wild Sundarbans, exploring the postcolonial wilderness of the City of Joy was actually pleasurable

January 13 - Kolkata

For much of our city tour, photography is banned. Police shepherd photography-intentioned, gawking tourists away from the imposing edifices that line Kolkata’s colonial streets. The Writer’s Building, built in 1780 for the East India Company’s bureaucracy, is the most glorious. BBD Bagh, renamed after the nationalists who attempted to assassinate the British Lieutenant Governor Lord Dalhousie, was once a central reservoir that supplied Calcutta’s water. It is not uncommon to hear locals refer to it by its old colonial name, Dalhousie Square. The other equally imposing edifices are the Standard Buildings and St Andrew’s Church. Across the road, on the ruins of the original Fort William -- the site of the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ -- stands the truly grand, domed General Post Office built in 1866. There is a 1902 Black Hole Memorial, sequestered in a corner on the grounds of St. John’s Church. It is an interesting church, but lacks the extraordinary majesty of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Here, the pews are original and the stained-glass west window is by Edward Burne-Jones.

The stately Victoria Memorial stands in memory of a dead queen

Although built for a dead colonial queen, the Victoria Memorial is an incredibly beautiful building. We pose in its well-tended gardens and photograph its magnificence over and over again. Only then do we enter the interior galleries that trace the history of the city.

We are overawed by the city; there is much that we haven’t seen – the Metropolitan Building of the colonial era, and Tipu Sultan’s Mosque. All this and much more will have to wait for another time. Meanwhile, we come away with an untroubled feeling. No pushy hawkers, no lewd remarks by passing men, no blank belligerent stares which women in Delhi are routinely burdened with.

That night we dine at “Oh Calcutta!” - a fitting end to a rather interesting day. As we feast on excellent Bengali cuisine we shelve thoughts of packing to be done that night – the hotel will graciously permit us to leave behind luggage so that we travel light onwards to what for me is the highlight of the whole trip.

Text and photos: Jennifer Nandi

Sundarbans Diary - The Enormous Estuarine Crocodile

Cruising through the backwaters of the Sundarbans in India, Jennifer Nandi marvels at the estuarine crocodile, even as her thoughts turn to the conflict between these fascinating reptiles and the ecosystem's human inhabitants

Estuarine crocodile sunbathing in the squelchy ooze

The plan for today begins with breakfast on board. Once again, to ensure a fairly decent meal, I do what it takes. It is rather surprising that the guide, the camp crew and boat crew have little idea of what standard quality of a meal implies. Nevertheless, all are co-operative and aim to please, which is a wonderful attitude to work with, and so my suggestions of difficult alterations to the breakfast menu are charmingly accepted.

Sundarbans diary - Leaving Bangladesh

In the fifth and final episode of her travelogue, Jennifer Nandi comes away admiring the simplicity of Bangladesh country life

A village pond with a mugger/ marsh crocodile

JANUARY 7, 2010

We come away from Bangladesh with an impress free from agitation of mind or spirit. This glowing effect devoid of conflict or commotion lasts us throughout our travels. This feeling was nourished by our soft-spoken team on the boat, by their generosity, their eagerness to please, their pride in their spotless vessel, the care and attention we received. And now driving through the countryside from the port of Mongla on our way to Jessore, the feeling settles nicely like a warm tea cosy. We pass villages that are clean, their surroundings well-attended. Even though on occasion village-life abuts the main road, there is a surprising lack of strewn garbage. Cows are not the hazard they are in India, where their aimless wanderings even on National Highways is a given.

Village scene in Jessore, Bangladesh

We stop at a fish market and are at once welcomed by the local people. They see us watching birds and ask whether we are conducting research. They witness our moment of high drama when we spy a small group of Grey-headed Lapwings. Our pleasure gratified by this serendipitous find, we invite them to look at the bird books. Ken shares his binoculars with them but the gesture is greeted with more puzzlement. If it’s your first time, it’s not easy to peer through field glasses. It takes some getting used to. They sheepishly pass the binoculars around and then, unrewarded, back to us. Our enhanced enjoyment of the ordinary puzzles them.But they are friendly and proudly show us their fish, sticking their fingers into the eyes and gills in a bid to show freshness of produce. They graciously make way for us to leave and wave goodbye enthusiastically.

At Bagerghat, 17th century architectural wonders at a UNESCO World Heritage site

En route to Jessore, we stop at Bagerhat to visit the country’s UNESCO world heritage site, the Shaat Gumbaj or sixty-dome mosque and other 17th century mosques built by one Jehan Ali Khan. To me, they all look the same and hold little architectural appeal. There is also a 16th century Hindu temple whose corbelled arch is a load-bearing feature - an architectural projection from the face of a wall to support weight, adding an interesting dimension to the temple. But what we really like is our unfettered access to walking in the surrounding villages. The people are again warm and friendly. They shyly peer at Ken - European tourists rarely come to this part of the world and he does cause quite a sensation. Sometimes local visitors from the cities ask that we be photographed with them. Yet the interest is not as undesirably prominent and in your face as it is in Rajasthan.

The corbel arch of a 16th century Hindu temple

Our flight to Dhaka is on schedule and we celebrate the end of our Bangladesh experience with a bottle of good red wine at the Hotel Westin’s fine Italian restaurant.

JANUARY 8
The next day we use the hours before our flight to go on a guided city tour. Traffic is horrendous but we do get to see Dhaka to get a sense of the place. At the airport we face a few hours delay before we return to more eating at the Oberoi’s superb Thai restaurant. And, of course, there is always more re-packing to be done for the next leg of our journey, this time to the Indian side of the Sundarbans.

Missed the previous episodes of Jennifer Nandi's Bangladesh travelogue? Read them here:

Episode 4: Bangladesh Sundarbans - At the Tiger's Dining Table

Episode 3: Beautiful Forest - Adrift in the Sundarbans

Episode 2: Heading for Bangladesh's Sundarbans

Episode 1: Slowly down Bangladesh's Shitalakhya River

Beautiful Forest - Adrift in the Sundarbans

In the third episode of her Bangladesh travelogue, Jennifer Nandi enters the sinuous spiderweb of the Sundarbans, where the sluggish rivers are reluctant to lose their freedom to the sea

There are three main rivers with their tributaries that make up the Sundarbans. The River Jamuna (Brahmaputra, in India) joins the River Padma (Ganges, in India); and further down its course, joins the River Meghna, whose source is in the Sylhet hills. The western portion of this river system lies in India. Though the Sundarbans have lost half of their inland area over the last 200 years through human encroachment, over 10,000 km of continuous mangrove wilderness remain.

The myriad channels that crisscross the Sundarbans like a spider’s web draw visitors such as us. Innocent of human structure, this landscape answers to a name that means ‘beautiful forest’. One-third of its total area is permanently covered by water. Yet, it is the only mangrove forest with tigers; it harbours one of the largest remaining global population of this highly endangered species. Its coastal waters are home to the world’s largest population of Irrawaddy dolphins. It comes as no surprise that these mangrove forests are one of the two Ramsar sites in Bangladesh. But the Sundarbans is not an easy place to be in.

Twice a day, the character of the water changes from fresh to salty. And twice a day too, much of the mud is exposed to the air. Creatures that live in these stressful environments tolerate the fluctuating changes of fresh to salt water. Rewards for doing so are huge because of the nutrition that is available in such waters. Food is delivered to the estuary every day from both the sea and the land, so the creatures that are able to survive here flourish.

Water hyacinth snagged on a tree after high tide

Cleaning crabs after an early morning catch

The sandbanks being covered by water twice a day snag prodigious amounts of food that are inviting to the daytime gleaning of birds. This is particularly vital for the winter migrants that need to strengthen themselves for the ordeal of their journey to the half-frozen nesting grounds farther north. Small, short-billed waders exploit surface-dwelling organisms of the tidal mudflats. Most waders possess ear openings positioned much further forward than those in other birds. In this way, they are better able to detect vibrations in the mud.

The shifting sandbars of the rivers part the braids of their wandering channels and on this cold, damp and foggy morning, we witness life at the very edge of existence. Pastels of dawn paint the early morning water and jungle a strange hue. We are sitting on a mattress in a flat-bottomed ‘country boat’. The boatman paddles into a small creek. There are other boats like ours – though their compulsion to be out, so early, on such a cold morning, is driven by sheer necessity. They are fishing vessels – anchored with a bit of rope to a convenient snag. The men lean forward, yielding beneath a burden of life, as they lower their nets for fish; others catch crab.

Nypa palms

The forest dawn is long. The dark, impenetrable mangrove forest narrows the channels. We paddle through these tortuously twisted creeks and the mangroves press closer. The water is shallow and dark. On the harsh, sluggish grey, steep banks that lead down to the water’s edge are clear prints of tiger. If one had to emerge for a morning’s snack, I don’t think we had much of a chance, armed guard notwithstanding. Eerie sunlight sifts through curtains of fog. It’s still cold. As we paddle into wider channels, flowerpeckers and sunbirds gather on the blossoms of the flowering trees taking advantage of the cold shafts of sun that part the fog.

The river beds of the Jamuna, the Padma and the Meghna together with their tributaries are full of sediment by the time they reach their estuaries. They become sluggish in their reluctance to lose their freedom to the sea. Mingling with the dissolved salts of sea-water, their sediments clump together and drift to the bottom. These fine-grained, great, grey banks of mud trap the gases produced by the decomposition of organic debris. Earthworm-like creatures, called lugworms, ingest quantities of this mud to extract this organic material. These fat-bodied worms are in turn food for birds whose beaks are able to probe deeper into the mud. We see Whimbrels with their long down-curved bills feeding on the squelchy ooze at low tide. They also feed on fiddler crabs, probing into their burrows with their superbly adapted bills. Curlews with their even longer bills are fewer in number. But it’s still too early for any serious birdwatching and two hours later we head back to our luxury boat for some sustenance.

Sundari trees, after which the Sundarbans take their name

Ken is particularly pleased - I’d taught the cook to use the percolator, so Ken could drink Italian coffee with his substantial breakfast. We are now sailing towards Katka, a port 6 hours away at the very tip of the Sundarbans where we meet the Bay of Bengal. We move onto the bridge. It is flooded with a tide of light. We sit in its warmth and softness with mugs of the hottest coffee, and our binoculars at the ready. It is a delightful winter morning, and we waste it watching waders. We spot the rare Finfoot and then had the vessel halt for a better look! It’s a shy and secretive bird – we are lucky to see it riding high in the water. We see more Whimbrels and Curlews. The steep banks provide little space for them to stand. Brown-headed gulls tail us for a long while. Brahminy Kites circle overhead, and those great white birds, the Large Egrets, with their fierce fiery eyes and spear-like bills, fly from tree to tree in their effort to get away.

And now the true splendour of the mangrove forest reveals itself in a study in halftones. The trees are of different species that have all found ways of adapting to their very particular environment. Of the 50 mangrove species in the world the Sundarbans harbour 20. The Crab-apple mangrove is the most common species we find this morning. Each tree has its share of Fire-breasted Flowerpeckers and Sunbirds that suck nectar from the few flowers remaining. The Mangrove Apple is taller but deer are able to reach its leaves. Rhesus Macaques gather its fruit. The villagers also relish the Mangrove Apple fruit and grind it into a chutney. Local fishermen use Nypa Palm that line the water’s edge, to thatch their country boats for shelter. The Blinding Mangrove has sap, as its name suggests, that blinds. Its wood was used to manufacture safety matches and newspaper. Not anymore. It’s a tall tree which we keep a look out for perching birds. Irrawaddy freshwater dolphins show themselves as fast-disappearing dark shapes.

We settle into lazy inaction. Like light, that great zeitgeber of biological clocks, the stable rhythm of the boat’s engine lulls my body rhythms to a state so peaceful and warm that I close my eyes and hold the moment, as even the wind holds its breath, making it last till the afternoon sun yawns over the water and another sumptuous meal is served.

In the late afternoon we board the country-boat and paddle into the broader channels. We return before the falling river dusk and board our luxury boat to cruise down to Kotka in the Bay of Bengal. Ours is the only boat apart from a few crab fishermen. Here the tidal range is very large and much of the land is flooded. At Kotka we find three other large boats packed with local holiday makers. Tonight again we have an excellent view of the star stippled sky. Another good day passes.

Missed the first two episodes of Jennifer's Bangladesh travelogue?

Read them here:

1. Slowly down the Shitalakhya

2. Heading for Bangladesh's Sunderbans

Furious Aila and prescient Amitav

The minutes crept by and the objects flying through the air grew steadily larger. Where first there had been only twigs, leaves and branches there were now whirling coconut palms and spinning tree trunks. Piya knew that the gale had reached full force when she saw something that looked like a whole island hanging suspended above their heads: it was a large clump of mangroves, held together by the trees' intertwined roots. - Amitav Ghosh The Hungry Tide

Ghosh makes the spectacle of the whirling wind seem as enchanting as in The Wizard of Oz but infinitely more threatening. His writing is magical - as if he has seen it all. Or perhaps, as people of the Sunderbans might say, if you have seen one cyclone and lived to tell the tale, you have seen them all. In these parts, do they measure the longevity of their lives by the storms they have survived? The Sunderbans and their neighbourhood have been battered time and again by the most furious and bloodthirsty of storms. Each cyclone whips up a seemingly unending wave of suffering that generation after generation of people must endure. Their wretched homes torn asunder, their emaciated livestock drowned, and their meagre savings gone to seed, the survivors are perhaps unluckier than the victims. They are faced with the crushing and intimidating prospect of beginning their lives all over again. As if this were not sorrow enough, they are encumbered by the absence of family members who were once their sustenance and stay.

Number-obsessed statisticians are auditing assets gone to waste and counting bodies - human, mostly. Environmentalists are mourning the loss of habitats, which have either wiped out or displaced the region's fauna: dolphins, gharials, tigers... and these are only the charismatic species. How much has been lost forever we can only tell when the hungry tide is satiated. Of these sinister storms, Cyclone Aila was the most recent. And she certainly won't be the last. Despite all the technology at our command (and our consequent hubris), we will never be capable of stopping natural disasters in their tracks. Meteorologists can issue warnings. Governments can cry out for aid. Relief workers can mop up the mess. And the media can weep and wail, insinuate and blame, and generally prolong the suffering for as long as public sentiment lasts. But despite all of that, we cannot predict the weight of nature's wrath. We can only measure its aftermath. And count our dead.

Talking dolphins with Amitav Ghosh

Could the 'porpoises' that cruise operators show off in Goa's Mandovi and Zuari estuaries be Irrawaddy River Dolphins? Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh thinks so. His argument is compelling...

I met Amitav Ghosh for a rediff interview last month in Mumbai. While the interview was about his new novel Sea of Poppies, our conversation wandered to many subjects. I have always been curious to learn how Ghosh, who is known to conduct painstaking research for his books, knew so much about the Gangetic Dolphin that he writes about in The Hungry Tide. I popped the question, and his reply was both illumining and awe-inspiring.

The Hungry Tide is set in the Sunderbans and one of its protagonists is an Indian-American scientist named Piyali Roy who arrives in the region to study the Gangetic River Dolphin. When Ghosh went about his research for the book, he wrote to a number of dolphin researchers. Only one responded - Prof. Helene Marsh of the James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. She pointed him to her student who was researching Irrawaddy river dolphins in Cambodia. With this scientist, Ghosh traveled up the Mekong and "saw the research absolutely at firsthand".

"The Irrawaddy Dolphin," Ghosh told me, "is a coastal species. "What’s special about it is that some branches of it live in freshwater, some live in brackish and some live in coastal regions. Dolphins are incredibly adaptable."

And then he asked me, "Have you seen the dolphins in Goa?"

Somewhat ignorantly, I said yes and no.

Yes, because I have seen dolphins off the coast of Kapu (formerly Kaup), near Udupi in coastal Karnataka. And no, because those weren't river dolphins as far as I knew.

Kapu is a beach of incredible beauty, with conical spires of rock rising straight out of the sea and a lighthouse atop one of them. Usually, the rocks are clear out of the water and you can climb all the way up to their summits. In August 1998, I went to Kapu just when the monsoon had taken a breather. The tide was full, though, and the cones were cut off by a sizable tidepool that I, a swimmer skilled only in drowning, had no intention of testing. It was the first time I had seen the beach like that, with deep water all the way up to the lip of the shore, and its beauty was forbidding and fascinating at the same time.

We heard a group of tourists exclaim and point to the water beneath one of the rocks. Small humps of bluish grey broke out of the waves. It was a pod of about six dolphins. They were large - each about eight feet long - and they bobbed in and out of the water with smooth, sinuous movements. I remember being amazed that these dolphins swam so close to the beach, and that they approached people without fear. Later, I learned that both these traits were part of the dolphin's personality.

Reading Nature's Spokesman, a set of published columns by the late naturalist, photographer and writer (also illustrator and poet) M. Krishnan edited by Ramachandra Guha, I came across a piece (Five Encounters) in which Krishnan recounts a strange meeting with dolphins in Point Calimere on the Coromandel Coast. Wading out to sea, Krishnan is suddenly accosted by a school of these small whales - small only in comparison to orcas and humpbacks, for he remembers them as being strong, muscular and eight feet long. He also remembers, as he is standing there in shoulder-high water with his camera raised high above his head, that dolphins have razor-sharp teeth and a bite that could snip his hand off (well, we know that dolphins can kill sharks).

Back to Amitav Ghosh. After I mumbled my noncommittal reply about dolphins in Goa, he went on to tell me about the popular dolphin cruises in the Mandovi estuary. "The sort of dolphin I wrote about in The Hungry Tide – the Irrawaddy Dolphin – is actually the dolphin that they show tourists in Goa, where at the mouth of the Mandovi river they have a breeding pod. People don’t know what kind of dolphin it is so they say it’s a porpoise!"

Distribution of Orcaella brevirostris: warm coastal waters and rivers from the Bay of Bengal to Northern Australia (maps - copyright IUCN)

This is a very compelling argument but whether it is true I do not know. No marine biologist I have asked has confirmed this to me yet. I know from my reading that the Irrawaddy River Dolphin has a wide distribution and is known to be very adaptive. Its bumped head is a lot like the Beluga's and therefore the confusion with porpoises (also contributed by the fallacy that all dolphins are bottle-nosed). I have come across several Internet conversations where tourists who have been to Goa have dissed the Goa dolphins as porpoises. "Nothing like Flipper," says one blogger.

There are river dolphins in the large river mouths of India - the Indus and the Gangetic River Dolphins are believed to be the same species by some cetologists and have been observed in the relatively unpolluted waters of the Chambal. Whether they have been studied in the Mandovi and the Zuari and the great estuaries of the south Indian rivers I do not know.

But something tells me Amitav Ghosh may be right.

UPDATE - June 27, 2011:
I met Amitav Ghosh again in Mumbai in connection with the second book of his Ibis trilogy, River of Smoke, and reminded him of this conversation that we had in 2008. The great author graciously published a link to this post on his blog.