Mangroves, Mountains and Monkeys

For those of you who have stuck with reading this blog to this point, I promise that things will get a lot cheerier from here on.
On the bus ride out of Kolkata I met an Indian man who was traveling to the same place I was: Sunderban Tiger Reserve. He was the same age as I was, born and raised outside of Kolkata and we were both heading several hours south of Kolkata to the delta of mangroves that forms the mouth of the Ganges River. This delta is enourmous and part of it lies in India, the rest in Bangladesh. This mangrove forest is considered the largest in the world and is home to none other than the Royal Bengal Tiger. There are Royal Bengal Tigers elsewhere in India, some that are bigger than here, but these Bengal Tigers are considered special because somewhere in their evolution, whether through their environment or human interaction, they have become man-eaters and often hunt the people that live and fish in the mangroves. It is estimated that thousands and thousands of people have been killed by these tigers. (see, I told you it would get cheerier!) By the same token, thousands of these tigers have been hunted and killed over the years and the area is now a protected reserve.
The trip there was an adventure in itself. It would require a 3 1/2 hour bus ride, followed by an hour and a half ferry ride, followed by a 45 minute bicycle rickshaw ride, followed by a short 10 minute ferry ride to the camp I would be staying in. The man I was traveling with was a professional photographer in India and had been to this reserve a number of times. I decided to stick with him for at least the trip there. He would be going on, deeper into the mangroves on a longer trip than I would be but I figured there was less chance of getting lost or ripped off if I stuck with him.
After the initial bus ride, he recommended that we take a 1 hour motor-rickshaw over a dirt road "short-cut" to save time, rather than take the hour and a half ferry ride. Sounded good to me. A motor-rickshaw is basically a small engine motorcycle that has been modified to have an axle and two wheels in the back. The driver sits on the motorcycle seat and the passengers sit on a board that has been mounted over the axle in back. It's really, really comfortable, not! Especially on a pot-holed dirt road. This thing rattles every vertabrae in your back. The good thing about it is that this dirt road took us through jungle vegetation mixed with farm land. and every so often we would come upon a cluster of small, one room, mud homes with grass thatched roofs. These little villages had no electricity or running water. Usually there were cattle, chickens and goats running around, people working in the fields, people bathing in ponds and little kids who would frantically wave and yell, "tata! tata!" at you. If you waved back a huge tooth filled smile would spread across their faces. I have a feeling that not many tourist know or take this "short-cut". I was pretty cool.
After the motor-rickshaw ride, we had to take a small, wooden ferry boat across a river to where the larger ferry would have dropped us off. Once across the river, we were now on an island and had to take a bicycle rickshaw ride for 45 minutes. A bicycle rickshaw is just like a motorcycle rickshaw except that it's a bicycle and yes, powered by a guy who peddles the bike. Initially, I had a bit of an issue with this. It felt a little too colonial for me to have an Indian man bicycle me around. In Kolkata there were also traditional hand pulled rickshaws that many people would use, but I couldn't bring myself to it. The photographer explained to me that the bicycle rickshaw was the main mode of transportation on this island and that it was the only way for some of these folks to make any money. He also explained to me that it wasn't just tourist that use them, the locals use them regularly. With that, I saddled up and me, the photographer and two other locals were wisked away by a 120 pound guy, who to get momentum had to run along side of the bike and then hop on an work the peddles to make it move. It was a flat 45 minute ride.
During the bicycle rickshaw trip, the local guy who sat next to me would point things out as we rolled through the villages. At times it was hard for me to understand him even though he was speaking English. And it was more than just his accent. I've noticed over the past month in India that English has kind of branched off into its own language here that uses a mix of English and Bengali or Hindi and that some English words are used for different meanings than I am used to. Like the word "only". It is used here to mean "exactly". It took me a month to figure that out.
When we reached the other side of the island, the photographer and I hopped on different ferries. Mine across a small stretch of river to my lodge and his to deeper into the mangroves. Before we parted he gave me a fatherly warning about safety while traveling. He warned of theives and cheats and people who will slip drugs into your drink to steal your kidneys. I've found it an interesting paradox that the people I meet who are not involved in the tourism industry will go out of their way to help you, even pay for things for you (the photographer paid for my ferry ride). But those involved in the tourism industry or stand to make a rupee off of you can be ruthless. We said our Namskaars and off I went to my lodge.
The lodge I was staying at was basically a concrete dorm building with a dining room, all surrounded by a barbed-wire topped fence, which was, of course, to keep those pesky man-eaters out. Some of the sections of fence looked like a possum could knock it down. The lodge offered boat tours of the mangroves. The boat ride was a day trip that would bring the tourists to 2 or 3 watch towers where we could try and spy tigers and other wildlife in the thick vegetation.
I'm going to end the suspense now and let you know that I did not see a tiger. I wasn't really expecting to, since it's a rare occassion that someone does. That being said, a tiger was spotted by some tourist at one of the watch towers a few hours before my boat got there. That being said, I did see a bunch of other really cool wildlife. Lots of white spotted deer, wild boar, corcodiles and a water monitor, which is a giant 6 foot plus lizard thing. At one of the watering holes below a watch tower, there was a deer, boar and water monitor all drinking near each other. When the boar unknowlingly wandered into the water monitor's personal space, the water monitor whipped the pig with its tail! It was really funny and the boar ran off scared into the mangroves. There were also plenty of birds including several types of the beautiful Kingfisher, a small, magnificently colored fishing bird. There were also a couple Fishercats. These were jungle cats that are about three times the size of a house cat. About twice the size of a lynx but very lean with long legs.
But better than all these wildlife sightings combined was seeing monkeys. And not just any monkeys, these were monkeys that were extremely habituated to humans. They were habituated from years of people, including the lodge staff and government wardens feeding them scraps. So habituated that they hung around the lodge trying to get food. They would come running when you left your room and would even try to get into your room. When I first arrived, I went into my room and laid down on the bed to rest from the long trip. After about two minutes I heard something at the side of my bed. When I looked, it was a baby Macaque monkey who was standing on its legs looking at me. And this was the inside side of my bed. It had worked its way under my bed to the other side, way inside the room. It made a whimpering little peep at me. I sat up and yelled, "Monkey!!" and off it scurried back under my bed and out the door. Every day these guys would be out on the balcony of the lodge, jumping from the trees to the railings. At night you could hear them on the corrugated metal roof, up there monkeying around. Against stern warnings, I made eye contact with a big one and tried to stare it down. It hissed and bore its fangs at me and then bluff charged. Now I've been bluffed charged by black bears before and was always able to stand my ground. But when this monkey bluff charged me all that ranger wildlife training went out the window and I ran. I ran and didn't stop until I had slammed the bedroom door behind me. I love those monkeys! They're so much fun to watch walk around and poke at things. They're like having little mischievous friends that are always getting into trouble. I could spend hours watching them. Once in a while a mama would come running by with a baby clinging to her back.
Tourists are only allowed into a certain section of the mangroves, locals are allowed to enter into a second section to subsist, which usually entails fishing and gathering honey from wild bee hives. A third section, the "core" is off limits to all but scientists and government personell. I'm thinking of proposing the Wonder Lake area of Denali to become a "core" area where tourists aren't allowed.
When I traveled through Ecuador a few years ago, I went to the coast to see the mangroves but they were all gone. Almost the entire coast of that country used to be covered in mangrove forests but they were all cut down to make way for shrimp farming pools. It was great to finally see what they look like.
While out on the boat tour, we pulled into one of the watch tower stops. The tour boat infront of us was taken up by a large Indian family. When I got off the boat, I was approached by an older Indian man who asked me the usual questions such as where am I from, my work, how long traveling, etc. He also asked me if I was married. This is usually the second question after where are you from. And it is usually followed by how old are you? Which is, of course, followed by "why not?". These questions are not considered too personal in India, nor are they considered rude to ask. Marriage is such a huge, important aspect of this culture that it seems to always be on people's minds. After answering the older man's questions, his family all came walking up, which he introduced me to all of them, his wife, sister, brother in law, father and mother, and children. When explaining who I was to his family, he said, "He is from America, he is an Alaskan bachelor." That phrase was then thrown around the family mixed with Bengali. I kept hearing, "blah, blah, blah, Alaskan bachelor." It made me laugh. It sounded like a new TV reality show, "The Alaskan Bachelor", oh, wait, that's right, that was a reality show, but fortunately I wasn't the Park Ranger on it, that was the park service's own Mike Thompson from Bering Land Bridge National Preserve! Mike, you should come to India, they're waiting for you.
It was really nice to just be out on the water with fresh air, a breeze and sunshine. And no car horns. It was really quiet at night (once the monkeys went to sleep) and I had two really good nights of sleep.
On the third day I left the Tiger Reserve. I decided to skip the motor-rickshaw "short-cut" and take the regular ferry instead. The ferry was a really interesting ride too. It stopped at every little village along the main riverway dropping off and picking up people and cargo. The river is the only transportation access to these villages and you can see that the ferry is the main artery running in and out.
The bus ride back into Kolkata was like a polluted slap in the face. Fortunately, I would only be there a few hours before catching an over night train north to Darjeeling to see the mountains. The last part of the train ride there is on an antique "toy train" that is only a little bigger than the toy trains children ride at an amusement park. It worked its way very slowly up into the mountains, offering great views of the flat plains below.
The vegetation changed from tropical to a mountain forest. Not only did the terrain change but so did the people. The racial features of the people were more like their Asian neighbors to the north and did not look at all like the Indian people I had seen down in the plains.
Darjeeling was unseasonably cold. They had just had snow a few days before I got there. The northern part of India was still caught in a cold wave as transportation to and from the north was being shut down due to the snow. I knew my plans to continue further north to the state of Sikkim were not going to happen. I figured I would spend a couple days in the mountains then head south again. Darjeeling was damp and cold and under fog most of the time I was there. During the day it was really nice to be in fresh air again and great cool weather for walking around all day. There were even a few monkeys in the area! I made sure to avert my eyes anytime one of them contacted me. At night it would drop down to just above freezing which is fine if you've got a heated guest house with a hot shower. But if you are as cheap as I am, you don't. I could see my breath in my room. I took a cold water, bucket shower the first night and then wised up to never try that again. I slept with my fleece on and in my sleeping bag with the two heavy blankets provided by the guest house on top of that. It was kinda like winter camping. There was no heating anywhere in the guest house. I ate my dinner in the kitchen of the restaurant sitting around a coal burning stove with the family that ran the place. They just looked at me wondering why I was there. I looked back wondering why I was there, too. The first morning I woke at 4am and took a shared taxi ride up to a place called Tiger Hill. From there I, and dozens of other people, watched the sunrise on Khangchendzonga, the third highest mountain in the world. Seeing the pink alpenglow on the mountains was worth getting up early and freezing off my butt for. Off to the left, far, far in the distance you could just see the Everest Range. Back down in town, Darjeeling was blanketed in fog. It was also Tibetian New Year, which I thought would be an exciting time to be in Darjeeling since there is a large population of Tibetian refugees there. Unfortunately this only meant that a good number of the shops and restaurants were closed, including the Tibetian Self Help Center where refugees make arts and crafts and there is an orphanage and school. It appears that I had mis-timed my trip to the mountains. But all in all it was still nice to be up there. That night it got so cold that I went to bed at 7:30pm and didn't get out from under the covers until 8:00am the next morning. I looked out the window, it was starting to rain. I packed up and caught the next bus south.