the sunderbans and calcutta

pictures are coming, but last friday, christy and i left for calcutta, india. we had to fly 1 and a half hours east to delhi, only to fly 2 hours back west to calcutta because there are no direct flights on fridays to the city an hour south (by air) of us. we arrived late in the evening and took a prepaid taxi across the city to our fancy hotel. along the way, many, many people were sleeping on the medians and along the sidewalks. it made crawling into my cushy bed that night a little creepy... but, after crashing for a quick 6 hours of sleep, we headed out in the morning to catch the bus to the sunderbans, which is a mangrove forest on an archipelago at the mouth of the ganges between west bengal and bangladesh...you can see them jutting out on a map and there's a great wikipedia page on the place if you're interested. it's a unesco world heritage site and is home to a few hundred tigers. for some reason they thrive in the thick brush and have adapted extremely well to swimming between all the islands. the tide comes in and out twice daily and the landscape is constantly changing. it's a unique place for many reasons, but this is where salt and fresh (they call it 'sweet') water, meet so there's a variety of animals, birds and amphibians...and then the mangroves themselves have over 50 different varieties. so, the bus ride was a typical, crazy indian driver beeping the entire 3 hour drive, dodging and weaving around people, livestock, rickshaws, bikes, motorcycles, cars and trucks...driving as fast as possible while the hot and sweaty passengers on the bus swayed back and forth from quick changes of momentum. from the drop off point on the ganges, we then got into a boat and went an hour and a half into the sunderbans (which means 'beautiful forrest' in hindi). that part was very peaceful and pleasant with the a cool breeze and interesting scenery. for the next couple days we spent many hours on the boat moving through the channels looking for well hidden animals. we thought we'd be able to see tigers, but friends we met said this is one of the worst places ever to see tigers due to the heavy brush. tigers are rarely seen. we did see lots of birds and some lizards and deer, and even despite not seeing any big cats, i enjoyed the reprieve from the city. our meals were really good, our accommodations comfortable and the people we met certainly made the trip. christy and i were used to being amongst many ex pats whilst in these touristy sites. here, however, half of the people were indians taking their families to the forrest to show them nature and how village people live. we took a walking tour through one of the villages on the islands, all of which have no electricity and running water, and the 'city indians' on our tour were just as fascinated by life there as we were. i was watching their reactions to the things we saw with great interest. after our time there ended, we took the above mentioned trip in reverse and wound up back in calcutta around mid day searching for traditional bengali food. the next day was our only full day in the city, so we made the most of it. we went exploring around the city, took a rickshaw ride on one of the few remaining human rickshaws in india, walked through a fantastically indian flower market (we were the only foreigners i saw), saw some tourist sites, went to the enormous botanical gardens in search of a huge, 250 year old banyan tree and then met some of christy's family for dinner. her sister married a bengali man, sumit, whose parents moved to the u.s. during the pakistan partition, before he was born. his mother's sister still lives in calcutta and so sumit's first cousins took us out for dinner and we enjoyed them so much that we hope to go trekking in ladakh (the indian himalayas). the next morning we were up super early and back on our zig zag trip home. a whirlwind trip, but i'm so thankful to get to travel and see such cool things...i'm very fortunate. i'm in the process of editing photos, so they will be posted soon. lots of love, j