Sunderbans: The Bengal Tiger Habitat

The Calcutta Wetland Bheris

One crisp winter morning, we decide to visit the Royal Bengal Tiger in its own habitat. The wetlands that are home to the most number of bengal tigers are not too far away from us. Although the prospects of seeing a tiger in the wild are not too bright in winter, we can't resist the temptation. A foggy dawn is just breaking when we load up our old Qualis and drive east into the sunrise.

Basanti - Sonakhali Jetty

Basanti-Sonakhali is 2 hours picturesque driving from Calcutta. All around us the waters of the wetlands glisten, rippling gently in the breeze. Migratory birds look like white lotus flowers growing in the bheris of the wetlands off the eastern bypass of Calcutta.Ten minutes from the bypass, the city gives way to thatched huts with gourds growing on creepers climbing their roofs. Cycle vans laden with produce ferry their ware to the weekly village markets.

Sunderbans waters

We leave the car here at the local police station in Basanti and board the waiting launch on a sputtering 3-hour boat-ride to Sajnekhali on an extremely wide expanse of water.

Tourist boats in the Sunderbans

For the next 2 days, we inhabit a chimerical landscape that is the bengal tiger habitat. The Tiger God Dakhsin Rai reigns here with Bon Bibi, the Queen of the Sundarbans forests There is an ever-changing infiniteness about the waters as they make and re-make the giant Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, the largest delta on Earth.

A serene chimera: the Sunderbans landscape

Islands emerge and submerge in wide water-webs. Where there is land today, there will be a water channel tomorrow. Where there is water, there may be a treacherous silt island being formed even as we float along. The banks of the placid looking channels of water are continuously eroding; the water eats up land-pockets and creates curved marshes, swamps, tunnels and rounded bends.

Trees like the Sundari, the Goran and the Dhundul live and breathe half-submerged among reeds and water-ferns; the viviparous vegetation gives the area a hallucinatory atmosphere.

The Sundarbans are the beautiful forests; they are the forests of the Sundari trees. They create a surreal archipelago; a mystic, mysterious green-blue world that is both water and land.Royal Bengal tigers roam freely in this landscape, swimming the channels and often straying into human habitation.

The Estuarine Crocodile: sighted in Sajnekhali

We see lots of birds—kingfishers, parrots, herons, cormorants, sea gulls as well as egrets, cranes and storks. We spot several deer and wild boar, crocodiles, Olive Ridley turtles and monitor lizards. We do not see other residents like the gangetic dolphin or the fishing cat. Several boat-rides and tower-watches at Sajnekhali and Sudhanyakhali notwithstanding, the Royal Bengal Tiger also eludes us.

Watch-tower in Sajnekhali

But the rhesus macaque is everywhere! Our everyday monkey thrives on the human contact and food-donations of 40-50 thousand tourists per year!

The Rhesus Macaque in Sajnekhali

The Sunderbans Royal Bengal Tiger Project area of 2585 square kilometers has 3 divisions—the sanctuary area that tourists are restricted to; a 1255 square km buffer zone and 1330 square kms of “core area.” In 1984 the core area was given National Park status and it has also been made a World Heritage Site since 1989. Narrow riverine channels that disappear and appear with the tides are often the only access to the core area.

Room at the WBTDC Tourist Lodge

At Sajnekhali, where the sanctuary begins, the WBTDC tourist lodge is a dark green, all-wood rectangular structure on stilts. Stairs lead to a long, thin corridor that leads to small, square rooms that are clean and functional with paper-thin ply partitions and attached baths.

I find a huge, hairy spider on the wall of the bathroom. I keep a wary eye on it as I finish my business in record time and get out. The shower can wait until I get back home!

The monkeys of Sajnekhali have learned human skills like begging, snatching and thieving. Despite the grill on the windows, we return from a little expedition to a room ransacked by the monkeys. Our stuff was all over the room. There were monkey paw marks on the pristine white bed-sheets. Fruits had been half-eaten and danced on and as they went back out of the window, our cousins left us the gift of the stinkiest monkey-poo you can imagine! Even a thorough washing of the room with buckets of phenoil couldn’t get rid of the stench!

A small museum at Sajnekhali educates us about the amphibian tiger population here and the consequences of the intersection of tiger and human habitats. Fishermen and honey-gatherers wear masks at the back of their heads to fool the tiger who, the myth goes, attacks only from the back!

Bon Bibi & Dakshin Rai
Photo credit: sulekha.travel.com

The villagers call the Royal Bengal tiger Dakshin Rai(Lord of the South) who owns all the wealth of the Sunderbans along with his partner, Bonbibi(Forest Lady). Both Hindus and Muslims in the Sunderbans worship the duo’s idols at common shrines and offer homage to them before they set out to plunder the Lord’s wealth in order to earn their daily bread.

Suitably gorged by Dakshin Rai’s riches, we overdose on the sunset!

The sun lowers to the horizon, dips into the water and dissolves in seconds, leaking its oranges and reds all around us. On our way back to Sonakhali, we are a pensive group. I am feeling awed, humbled and somewhat chastened, as if I have touched an immensely precious object I shouldn’t have—and left a smudge on it.

Photo Credits (Except Dakshin Rai & Bon Bibi): Arjan Banerjee