Our eco-tour of the Sunderbans is just that. We snooze on the scenic three hour drive down, enjoying chai breaks along the way. We pass the Kolkata dump, which provides thousands of people with a living, sifting through the rubbish and recycling. This huge mound looks like a hill on the horizon, forever increasing in height as the rubbish increases. We then are treated to a flat landscape, which is a sheer novelty. On this trip we travel like locals, we take the local boats and auto rickshaws to get to our island, and then begin with a walking your of the village.
This Eco-lodge has been well established with buy in from the local community, and it's fascinating to walk around. After watching a beautiful sunset we then go and listen to a local band, playing traditional music. After dinner we take up the opportunity to walk guided by the moonlight to a locals home, where we sit and drink rice wine, talking of the devastation of the cyclone and tiger attacks.
The next morning we are on the boat all day, spotting wildlife, walking in the fenced in section of the tiger reserve and enjoying the relaxing scenery, sitting on the top deck of the boat. The group of friends travelling from Kolkata have peaked early and overdid the rice wine and rum and are sleeping it off in the deck below. Sadly the only tigers that we saw were those printed on a tourists shirt, but at the second and best tiger lookout all the Indian tourists were so loud, that they would have frightened away anything!
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