February 22nd: Sundarbans (lack of) Adventure!

Today was Friday and the Muslim day of prayer and therefore a day off again. A group of us hired a boat to make a trip to the Sunderbuns (?) – the famous mangroves supposedly full of bandits and tigers. OOOOhh exciting. We left at the ungodly hour of 6:45 in the a.m. The boat travelled at about 2 knots per hour. It was almost like being back on the house boat – with a little cabin below and a roof that we sat on the whole trip there – roughly 4 hours.
We had been told that we would have to bribe park officials to let us into the park without a permit, and then hire an armed guard to protect us from tigers and bandits.
We arrived and were told that park officials were not there and so would not be allowed to enter the park. But we were allowed to take a walk around the compound with a man with a gun (to protect us from the tigers). The walk was to last an hour. We all agreed to be extremely quiet so as to no scare away any ferocious beasts that we might be so lucky to see. We began walking (after we all took turns getting pictures with the guard). We walked for about 2 minutes and then the guard stopped. We all stopped in anticipation, peering into the forest ahead in anticipation of what we were about to see. We waited and waited, until someone finally asked, “What are we looking at?”. It turns out the we had reached the edge of the compound and our adventure was over. Then our guide pointed out what looked to be mud but were told it was tiger scat. Was it? I will never know. We took our lunch on the mud lawn of our friendly gun-man’s home, and then were off back to Rayenda. We were lucky enough to see some wild pigs, some bald eagles and some water buffalos on the way back.

Laura and Scotty (the friendly Canadians) made us supper tonight. We got a break from rice, dhal, and carrots, tomato and cucumber, and were treated to an awesome meal of spaghetti with tomato sauce (made with ichiban noodles), cawliflower and cheese sauce (made from a jar of cheese whiz that Laura had lugged all the way from Canada).
All in all – a fabulous day!