We spent the first half of the week on a boat trip through the Sundarban forest. Here are some experiences that i jotted down:
-boarding sampan boat at a sketchy pier, in darkness on the first night
-"country boat" rides, spotting kingfishers, meter-long lizards, thousands of mudskippers
-Indian Ocean swimming, relaxed on a hot sunny day
-hike in the silt mud, up to my knees, wearing too-big boots and getting stuck and off-balance the whole time, through the dense tiger mangrove forest. stepping on hundreds of crabs. fearing the tiger. armed guards - was this a good idea?
-simple food: dahl(yellow lentils) and rice, fried potatoes, cucumber and tomato salad, fried fish, apples and bananas
-making a mud spa on a mud beach
-smooth gray, silty mud. more mud
-tiger growling in the woods, estimated 2 km away. me making tiger noises, a lot, from the roof of the boat
-family travel, with grandmas and babies on the boat - this was nice
-armed guards came with us
-we saw no tigers, though we heard one
-a national park; no one lives in the whole huge area
-returned feeling VERY relaxed after 4 days of sun and wind and water
(I'm not too excited about these pictures. Most were taken from a boat. If we went on shore, I usually left the camera behind for fear of the quick-sand-like mud everywhere.)
