Into the Sunderban

It's five-thirty in the morning and we've been snugly packed into the back of a jeep that's making its way out of the city, which is still asleep, and into the Sunderban. Our tour guide Mowgli is in the front passenger seat. He is an excitable twenty-two year-old with skinny legs but the hint of a pot belly and long, highlighted hair. He likes pop music. He points to Calcutta on the left as we pass it by, notes the sun coming up over the mountains. But actually they are not real mountains, he says, they're just mounds of rubbish that people have burrowed into for shelter. Then he shrugs his shoulders and turns up the synchro-pop music on the radio. 

For three hours, the equivalent of about fifty renditions of Mowgli's favourite song, "Lollipop Lageli," we pass by one small village after another. Little children run after the car and curious elders pop their heads out of huts to have a look at the white people passing by. From the window I have a streaming, serene view of endless palm trees and water buffalo lazing in balmy ponds. The world is greener and more beautiful the deeper we go.

And I guess inside the car the atmosphere is pretty green, too, as Mowgli rolls his first of several hash beedis at 7am on the underside of a CD. He smiles a goofy grin and shouts over the music, "I just love to smoke. I only smoke since six months, but I love it. You know, some people when they smoke it make them psychotic, but me, I only eat like psychotic after smoke." Then he giggles a little boyish chuckle and bobs his head to the techno beat. After a bit we stop the car so that he can go "pee pee." I can't help but feel that we've been stuck with the tour company owner's half-retarded younger brother, which is pretty much the case here.

The further we get the more it seems like we're driving into the Bay of Bengal itself. The road increasingly gives way to marshlands on either side until we are speeding down a highway only as wide as the jeep itself. Little houses perch precariously on stilts in the water. I swear I see them sway a little in the breeze as we whiz by. At last we reach as far as we can go by car, so we hop into a tiny motorboat overloaded with villagers and head off to the next island. 

What a lovely change it is from the city when we get there. No electricity, no cars, no pesky peddlers. We hop onto the back of these bicycle carts called machine guns, which are much more pleasant than their name suggests, and watch miles and miles of more marshy farmlands roll by. Children are swimming in their murky pools, watching us with astonished smiles and yelling "Tata!" as we pass. The people obviously don't have much but they are carefree and friendly. There must be something in all this water. 

At last we pull up in front of a random old house that has been converted into a hotel. It has a path up to its front gate and another out its back. When we get to the other side I see the view that had been blocked by the rows of village huts on my way over, and it is exquisite. A narrow lane of dried mud takes us through an alley of twisted mangroves, with swamp on either side, out to the jetty of an old little tugboat and a deep, wide river. The opposite bank is nothing but gorgeous, untouched forest that seems to stretch on forever. Brimming with happiness and excitement, I jump aboard the deck of our peeling voyager and we chug our way over to the Tiger Reserve. 

That's where we pick up our real guide, a small and sweet old man who has lived on the island we just left all of his life. Free of his charges, Mowgli wastes no time in lighting up and then having a snooze on the deck. Meanwhile, we learn a little about the Sunderban wildlife and the Reserve's conservation efforts. The entire delta is made up of 102 islands. 48 of these are entirely uninhabited by people and protected as government property. Within this, the main species you'll find are Spotted Deer, several varieties of turtle, Monitor Lizards, Salt Water Crocodiles, and the Bengal Tiger. The area has the largest tiger population in the country and the Reserve has worked hard over the past few years to get its numbers back on the rise after a bit of a sharp decline. A fence has been put up along the stretch of islands that separates the side inhabited by people from the side that is not, as even though the water between the two is wide and teeming with crocs, tigers are still likely to swim across, attack villagers, and be killed.

Our little Bengali guide takes us up to the watch tower where we are struck by the awesome view before us - nature left absolutely to its own devices. Unfortunately, not much really happens in nature, and even in a setting so beautiful waiting for the tide to go down is like watching paint dry. Very soon our poor little jungle guide has five sleepy Californian kids passed out on the floor of his watch tower. Once he wakes us up whispering, "Please look!" and I see a long snake, a cobra, skimming along the surface of the water. He must've seen it a million times before but the sight makes him so happy, so I watch for a bit and say, "Cool," then fall right back into my heat-induced sleep.

With the water level a little lower, we can take the boat a bit deeper into the forest and hopefully spot some animals as they come out to drink. For a while though all there is to see is a few Spotted Deer, for whom Mowgli wakes up and bestows a bit of his genius wit by pointing and calling out, "Tiger food!" They soon scatter, ad Mowgli decides it's time for lunch. After another smoke, of course.

I really don't know why we ever switched to cutlery in the West. Eating Indian food with your hands is so much more satisfying, especially when you're dangling your legs off the side of a boat churning down the waterways of a mangrove forest. What is not pleasant is when thirty minutes after your meal you hear a splashing sound on the deck behind you and turn about to see the driver, still clutching the wheel, bent over and releasing the contents you yourself are still digesting onto the ground by your feet. Mowgli starts to giggle, "I ask him if he smoke the marijuana, he says yes. I ask him if he wanna smoke, he says yes. And now... Oh! (fades into Bengali and laughs hysterically)." At least yellow dal looks the same coming out as it does going in...

The end of our day out in the jungle is approaching. The only logical thing left to do at the end of a day like this is to get covered in mud. So we pull up to an empty bank and prepare for our "spa treatment." I would liken slipping off the prow into the Sunderban mud to falling into a giant vat of silly putty. I am instantly plunged up to my thighs in the slimy stuff, and whenever any one of us tries to lift a leg it has the hilarious effect not unlike, excuse language, the sound of a wet and juicy fart, which sends us all into uncontrollable fits of giggles and has us falling over ourselves in the mud. I feel little things moving between my toes. "Watch out for crabs," Mowgli calls out. I scream, then embarrass myself further by attempting to run through the mud to some sort of non-existent safe zone. And now I am committed - hopelessly stuck in the middle of the mangroves and covered in shit. "Now imagine if a tiger was standing right there," Mowgli grins at me stupidly, "What would you do?"

We all squelch about for a little longer, climb the trees (badly) next to a few huge Fiddler crabs, then head back to the open bank. Up to this point I've surprisingly kept my upper half pretty mud free and I'm taking pictures with my camera, but it is now that the battle begins.

From my left periphery I catch a glimpse of a perfectly aimed meteoroid of mud mid-orbit, spiraling towards me. It is too late to avoid it, and soon I am hit with a death blow to the chest. Mid-gasp, another whopper comes sailing through the sky, then another and another. With every one of Mowgli's attacks I sink deeper into the putty beneath me. He must really have it in for me. "Go on!" I tell my comrades, "Save yourselves!" But just then I feel a spark of courage rising up within me, I muster the strength to free my poor legs from their buttock-high encasement, I yell in my best Braveheart impression, "I have the will to LIVE!" Then I am blind-sided to the side of the head by a final cannonball of mud. I sink back silently into the squelchiness, dejected. Then I fling a meager little shot, a piddly thing, that lands in Mowgli's hair. He spins around and says quite seriously, "Hey, not my face OK?"

I accept my defeat and we all wash off in the river. The boat is anchored a bit of a distance off shore now, and we're going to have to swim to it. "Just watch out for crocodiles," Mowgli warns.

Fantastic.

"But Mowgli, what is the likelihood that there are crocs nearby us right now?" I ask, a tiny bit worried.

"What does this mean?"

"Er, are there crocodiles near us right now?"

"Oh yes."

"Er, are you sure?" Getting very nervous now.

"Definitely." Then just for good measure he tosses in, "These are the most dangerous crocodiles in the world. Salt Water Crocodiles."

"Oh. Great." He's such a comfort, that Mowgli.

But of course we all make it back to the boat, limbs and all, and we live to see the extraordinary beauty of a Sunderban sunset. I haven't mentioned the meaning of the name. In Hindi it is "beautiful forest," and it's true. In fact, it's so beautiful that not even spending the day with the half-retarded younger brother of a tour company owner could ruin it, even if he does blast "Lollipop Lageli" a good fifty more times on the ride back home.