Where the land meets the sea at the southern tip of West Bengal lies the Indian Sunderbans, a stretch of impenetrable mangrove forest of great size and bio-diversity. A UNESCO World Heritage Site (awarded in ’97) , the Sunderbans is a vast area covering 4264 square kms in India alone, with a larger portion in Bangladesh. 2585 sq. kms of the Indian Sunderbans forms the largest Tiger Reserve and National Park in India.

I had a chance of visting this majestic MANGROOVES this dusshera with my dad. It was a journey to eternity where TIME seems to be flowing in its own way and sometimes it seems that we have arrived in a prehistoric jungles and encapsulated by the nature in its own arms.

DAY1

I took the conducted tour of WBTDC( West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation) for 3Days and 2nights. we started from the headoffice of WBTDC in Kolkata from Esplanade on a bus. We were destined to go to Sonakhali. We drove through 86 kms of wetlands and agricultural lands to reach Sonakhali. After reaching Sonakhali we saw a huge magnificent launch waiting to welcome us. Before we boarded the launch we had to go to the forest department to get the permits for our camcorders. Its necessary to have the permits or else ur camcorders can be ceased by the forest departments officials.

After gettin the permits we boarded the launch to reach Sojnekhali a 3 hours ride on the launch. It was the best part of our journey. This is the PHOTOGRAPHER'S delight. You can take very good pictures of jungles, river and wildlife. Before reaching Sojnekhali we also halted for half an hour at a WATCH TOWER at BASANTI. We saw only few spotted deers and thats all the nature had for us. But the excitement increased when we were boarding the launch again at Basanti we saw a huge CROCODILE with its few small siblings taking a SUN bath. It was a awesome picture perfect scene. I quickly took out the camcorder and recorded the awesome scene. With a heavy heart we had to leave our JURASSIC mates and we left for the forest department lodge at Sajnekhali..

The forest department lodge was made up of wood with a watch tower to watch for tigers(though we couldn’t see ne. It was well past 8:00 p.m. by the time we reached the tourist lodge. We changed into our night gears and had a wonderful dinner (thnx to WBTDC). At last we retired for the day around 11 in the night with our mosquito repellent burning. Ya I forgot to tell u something, the tourist lodge has no lights after 6 pm in the evening coz they say IT DISTURBS THE WILDLIFE. What an excuse for bad governance.

DAY2

We woke up at 6:00 am all refreshed and quickly took a shower and did our daily chores to take our launch.

Today we were going to the Indo-Bangladesh border to see the wildlife. It was really exciting journey and it felt to me that we are in the AMAZONS. On the way we saw a few birds like HERONS,KINGFISHER and yes we also saw a GANGETIC DOLPHIN(the best as it was my first view of a live dolphin).

After traveling for around six hours on the water we reached our destination border where we evacuated the launch for another watch tower at BASANTI. There we saw the fresh PUG MARKS OF A TIGER AND WE HEARD THE ALARM CALLS AS WELL. The Tiger could see us but we couldn’t after all itz the KING OF THE JUNGLE. After waitin for half an hour to see the tiger we returned back to the launch to return to the lodge. While returning we saw some exotic crabs BLUE , YELLOW IN color and also some MUDSKIPPERS. We reached the lodge at around 7:00 pm in the night exhausted and tired, after all it was a long day. In the evening we saw a documentary of SUNDERBANS at the lodge though the technology and the movie quality and the sound quality was that not good but we could make out something about the sunderbaans.at last we retired for the day at around 10:00pm.

DAY3

We woke up at around 7:00am and visited the museum, while boarding the launch for our return to KOLKATA luck struck us again and we saw few CROCODILES and A MONITOR LIZARD together. We took our way back to Kolkata on the launch and on the way we saw a village called BIDHOBA GRAM(Widow’s village) as they say that all the men in the village had been killed by tigers and their wives live alone now. No men in the village. Haunting Right!!!!!!
We reached again Sonakhali around 1:00 pm and by 3:30pm we were in our HOME SWEET HOME in kolkata with all the everlasting memories of THE SUNDERBANS