Sunderbans, West Bengal, India

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This is where the Ganga River meets the Indian Ocean, a huge expanse of mangrove covered islands and estuaries that change salinity with the tides. The Sunderbans is the largest river delta in the world and also the largest estuarine mangrove forest in the world. It's home to the largest population of Royal Bengal tigers in India and also some of the world's largest crocodiles, which can get to be over 20 ft. long and big around enough to hold two grown men. Every year villagers are killed by the local wildlife. We went about in a large boat through the uninhabited regions of the wildlife sanctuary. Since the islands are heavily forested and we were confined either to the boat or to very limited, fenced-in walkways on a couple of the islands, we did not see much of the unique wildlife (except baby crocs at a breeding station). No doubt, the water, too, teems with life, including elusive pods of rare freshwater dolphins, but it's too full of silt to see anything at all. For this reason, this area felt wild to me, and mysterious, a place where a thousand eyes peer at us, unsentimentally, but we are blithely unaware. 

[-Usha Alexander, Oct 05]

Crossing the river	Mangroves	Fishing boat	Baby crocodile
Lily pond			Villagers
Curly waterway			Sunderban sunset
Mollusk	Low tide	Fishing boat	Sonakhali transportation
MV Madhukar			Little egret
Flora			Brackish delta water
Boat graveyard	Pneumatophores	Sunderban island	Ground water
Mangroves	Mangroves	Mangroves	Mangroves
Sunset	Packed boat	Fishermen	Baby crocodile
Chital deer	Flooded island at high tide	Boat stranded at low tide	Gosaba
Mangroves	Mangroves	Mangroves	Mangroves
Local dwelling	Boat convoy	Local ferry service	River transport
Fisherman	Crab and mollusk	Fish farms near Sonakhali	Fish farms near Sonakhali