South of Kolkata: the Sunderbans in West Bengal

On our way to the Sunderbans. We went on a 2 day trip with one overnight. Here, we're on a ferry to the village we spent the night in. Everyone in the village spoke only Bengali, no one understood our Hindi, let alone English. We tried speaking with a few villagers, and found The villagers make their living by fishing, agriculture, and gathering honey from the Sunderbans forests. All the villagers, whether Christian, Muslim, or Hiindu, they all pray to Banbibi, the goddess of the Sunderbans. We got to see the villagers perform a play about the legend of Banbibi. It was in Bengali, so we didn't understand most of it, but it was still entertaining!

Some buffalo in the village where we stayed.
A foreigner making his way into the village.


A stack of bundles of dried rice stalks. The villagers thresh all of the bundles to get the grains of rice. Sometimes rice farmers leave their dried stalks on the side of major roads so that the wind from cars threshes the rice!

Zach found a kid and wanted to take it home.
The village at sunset. Before I actually came to India, the village was what I had imagined all of India would be like.

The marshy edge of the Sunderbans at low tide.

Some village boys watching our departure for the Sunderbans. They were very shy but very curious and followed us everywhere. They spun these wooden tops with a string and then balanced them on their heads and hands!


Zach and Michael, from Australia, on our boat in the Sunderbans.


A crocodile!
A spotted deer running away.

A tiger footprint.

A hungry monkey swimming out in the surf to get some roti that tourists dropped in the water.
Another river boat.

Our driver on the bow, Michael on the left, Zach in the middle, and our friendly singing, guitar playing guide, Vikash on the right.

My face. Looking out at the Sunderbans, thinking how it looks like Florida and how I miss my grandparents and wish I was home for Christmas.