Sundarbans Thursday March 11

 Shortly after 9 we all piled into the trusty Hyundai van armed with water bottles, sandwiches, oranges, and lemon bars.... after an hour or more of rough bumpy roads and more of the fantastic scenery of Bangladesh, we arrived at the river where we were to get a boat to take us across to the mangrove forest of Bangladesh. This is an extremely dense forest of mangrove trees and thick vegetation. Home of spotted deer, crocodiles, monkeys, and supposedly Bengal tigers. They have built up a boardwalk through part of the forest so that one gets an eerie sense of quiet danger lurking as you walk through places where tigers and seemingly cannibals live. Monkeys are around and alert for anything they perceive as food. The only crocs we saw were in cages. But back to our arrival... we found a place to park the van, and almost immediately Travis was surrounded by about 45 men. They came from all over, here and there and out of nowhere it seemed. One was holding an umbrella over him, and they all were clamoring for his attention and business. Finally a deal was struck and we boarded the cutest little boat you ever did see. There was an awning over some padded wooded furniture for us to "lounge" on and he even had some neat little plants planted in containers and tied to the front of the boat. I will see if i can find some pics to post here. To get on this boat, we had to walk a gangplank onto another boat, and then hop onto this one. You see, here there are 50 boats all vying for space around a place that really only has room for maybe 10 boats! And so you crowd and bump and shove and pull until you get your boat to the spot where it can be accessed somehow. Lots of brown helping hands reached out to try to help these poor white helpless Americans on to the boat. And of course the endless request of "selfie pleese". I saw one man reach over and put his arm around Nicholas and crouch down beside him with his camera out. Nico just balled his fists into his eyes and squirmed away. I dont like him to be disrespectful, but if you allow one, in no time at all, there is a line up of 20 wanting selfies! So i didnt make too much of a fuss if he didnt want his picture taken. There were many phones out though taking videos and pictures of these Americans. I am not sure how long of a boat ride this is. Probably close to an hour motoring across the wide river, around big ocean going ships that are anchored here for some reason or another. There are brick factories and gas plants here that are shipping out maybe? Not sure what all might be imported here too. I am sure lots of different products. We landed over on the other side and walked around looking at the monkeys running around and the crocs in cages, and then walked the board walk through the forest. There were quite a few people there today so made for not so nice a time as could have been possibly. But still very enjoyable. The forest floor is boggy and muddy and would not be nice to walk in, plus who knows what kinds of insects and snakes and what all are lurking down there. We saw some salamander type creatures and lots of tiny crab things. Sadly no tigers today. They actually never see tigers from this spot. To even get a remote chance you have to hire a guide to take you back into the deep part of the forest. There is still lots of poaching going on in Bangladesh and because of that, most of the Bengal tigers have migrated to an area of India where they are more protected. After roaming around there for a while, we got back on our boat and headed back. Ate our lunch on the boat. Piled back in the van after some making use of the squat pot. Back along the bumps and potholes towards home. Travis' dropped Merv, Erika, Cherith and I off to catch an easy bike to go downtown Khulna. We haven't really had any "just us" time yet. Which is fine, we all enjoy Travis' but thought we would enjoy this too. We went first to the tailors to pick up the dresses he made for Erika and I. bought more fabric for a couple more dresses and a couple more shirts for Merv. Over to the other tailors to pick up and drop off shirts. The next stop was to be Coffee Glory. We took two rickshaws and thought we had communicated rightly to them where to drop us. One got way ahead of the other one, and we got to where the driver thought he should drop us off, and Merv and I knew this was not right. Plus the girls werent here. Ok..... Oh one man pointed and gestured that way... ok... around we went and no girls and no coffee shop that we could see. What now? We simply cannot communicate in this country and Cherith did not have her phone and we have no service away from Travis'. We had travis' phone but didnt know the passcode. We paid our driver what we later learned was an astronomical amount and decided to just strike out. We stopped at a cell phone store and asked if the owner knew english. he did know a little bit. We asked him where Coffee Glory was. He pointed and said "one minute walk". ok. We started out that way and soon had little stand owners wildly pointing and gesturing what we deciphered as" two americans that way". Sure enough we soon saw the girls waving wildlly at us from across the road. Whew. We enjoyed good coffee drinks and the a/c for a nice long while. Then back on another easy bike and headed out to where we were to meet travis for supper of chicken and naan. First went to see the fish market... wow. Lots and lots of fish and shrimp. Along one wall ther were a bunch of men cleaning fish. Not so good smelling as the spice market!!

Supper was superb. Made some market purchases and then back to trav's where we were more than ready to call it a day. 


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