I first visited the Sundarbans in India in 2009. The Sundarbans is located in the lower Gangetic Delta, in West Bengal. More precisely, the region is located in two districts of West Bengal-- district South 24 Parganas and district North 24-Parganas. There are 19 Community Development Blocks in the Indian Sundarbans. My visit in summer of 2009 was part of my preliminary fieldwork for my PhD at the University of Kentucky. I still remember I reached Kolkata with a lot of excitements on May 27, just after the cyclone Aila devastated the region.On my way to Kolkata, I completed Amitav Ghosh's novel "The Hungry Tide." In my mind I kept reminding Rilkae's poem which Mr. Ghosh quoted in his novel:
we, who have always thought of joy
as rising.....feel the emotion
that almost amazes us
when a happy thing falls.
Here, I should mention that I never had any opportunity to visit the Sundarbans before 2009. During my undergraduate and later in post-graduate, I traveled to the Himalayas as part of college and university programs. I never had any wish to visit the mangrove forests in the Sundarbans. Part of the reason is that probably I never realized the region or I was never curious about it. I became interested in the region and gradually fell in love with the lower Ganges delta while I was doing coursework at the University of Kentucky. As I started my own research on the region, I started developing an interest to visit the region. Finally, that came true in the summer of 2009. Although, summer is not an ideal time to do fieldwork in India, I had no choice. I had already completed my coursework at the university and summer was a good time to explore my possible research topic by visiting the region. People who are in geography or who have some experience of doing fieldwork in the discipline are aware of the fact that doing a fieldwork in geography, especially in human geography is not an easy task. Here, your work does not completely depend on you or on instruments rather on others' cooperation. So, building network with people who have same interests like you is an important homework. As a graduate student at the Kentucky, I was always told so. But I would say that building networking from abroad does not work well always. In fact it is pretty hard to do so when you are just a graduate student and not a faculty.I tried to build connections from the USA. For example, I sent an email to the director of the Kolkata WWF. I was delighted when I received a reply from Dr. Saswati Sen prior going to the field and visited her office later in Kolkata. However, networking was not at all easy before going to the field and I would say that it is okay if we can't establish connections before going to the field. In West Bengal, it always works better when you visit there in person and try to build networks after visiting. I thank my friend Sutapa for providing some NGO connection in the region via her mother.
In my first visit, I was accompanied by my friends Sonali and Debarati. We boarded an early morning train from Sealdah rail station in Kolkata and reached Canning.The distance between Kolkata and Canning is 42 km.After reaching Canning we crossed Matla river in a bhutbhuti --a traditional boat that runs by a diesel engine. Today, there is a bridge over Matla River and there are private vehicles such as "magic vans" that you can take to reach Godkhali. After getting down at Canning Station we followed the crowd towards the ferry ghat and took the bhutbhuti. We jostled through the crowd to catch a boat. Once you are on the boat and get a spot to sit, you are all set to have an amazing river cruising.
After reaching Godkhali, we had to take another ferry to reach Gosaba Bazaar. In my first visit, my friends and I stayed in lodge Suryatapa. In the following two days, I was accompanied by two local residents from Gosaba, Tanmoy and Nikhil. Nikhil was the ex-General Secretary of the Sundarban Hazi
Dasarat College or
Pathankhali College, a local college in Gosaba. He introduced to local fishermen of Malo Para and I discussed some of the fishing related issues with them. In our two-day visit, we also went to see the ecotourism spots of Sajnekhali and Sudhanyakhali. Both are located within the buffer area of the Sundarban Tiger Reserve.We hired a tour guide and a mechanized boat from the Sajnekhali Forest Office and embarked on our exciting journey to learn the region's ecology. Although we watched some monkeys, fiddler crabs, and variety of kingfishers, we were not lucky enough to see an estuarine crocodile and the region's attraction Bengal Tiger. Finally, in the end of the day, we were truly happy to encounter an iguana at Sudhanyakhali.
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| Crossing Matla River by bhutbhuti during the high tide |
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| Here I am on the bank of Matla River, Summer 2009 |
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Encountering an Iguana at Sudhanyakhali
Author: Priyanka Ghosh, University of Kentucky
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| Red fiddler crab in the Sundarbans |
