Sailing through the Sunderbans

Friday morning (which was a holiday in West Bengal - and by that I mean Friday was, not just Friday morning) we all piled in a van. Me, Susan, Aileen, Rahul, Xochi in her car seat, her nanny, the driver, the guide and 4 suitcases of luggage, a pack & play and a stroller. And that was just Xochi's stuff!

We drove about 90 minutes to a waterway that was to be the launching pad for our long weekend trip. Xochi was a star at the pier while we waited for the boat, with everyone vying for her attention and taking pictures of her. Many of them tried to kiss Xochi and even take her out of Aileen's hands. Can you imagine people doing that in the US? It happened every time we appeared in public with her not just here. You can imagine how tired of it Aileen is getting.

Anyway, we boarded a small boat and were thrilled to see we had it to ourselves while the group tours had about 20 people on boats of the same size. Even people on neighboring boats tried to get close enough to see Xochi! As they got ready to serve us breakfast, we asked how many people were working on the boat. The answer? Nine. For 4 adult passengers and one baby! We felt very indulgent! Even more so when they served us breakfast and lunch within a few hours of each other. After our meals, the guys working on the boat took turns holding and playing with Xochi. So many babysitters! They fought over the chance to play with her. It was a nice break for Aileen and Rahul, but at one point we were worried they wouldn't get any time with her at all. Besides drifting through the Bay of Bengal, we stopped on land occasionally to look for Bengal tigeers, for which the area is famous. Of course, there are only about 300 left so they're hardly ever spotted... this was no exception.

Aileen and Xochi

We were terrified as to what kind of rooms we would get once we landed on one of the islands and checked in to the "Mangrove Re-Treat". We had been told the rooms were "super deluxe" (what does that mean by Indian standards) but without hot water. In fact, we were told no running water, just buckets. You can imagine where our imaginations went with the rest of the place. As it turns out, the place was really lovely and we were the only people staying there. There was running water, even TVs and DVD players. However, there was not running water. Instead, they brought large buckets of boiling water every morning and you used a smaller bucket to create a shower for yourself. We weren't exactly working up a sweat during the day, so we were more than content. We decided the hotel must be brand new, as there were still stickers on everything, some items weren't painted, a few areas were missing lights (although the wiring was in place) and the TVs weren't yet hooked up to the satellite. Upon enquiring, we were proudly told it had been open 7 months! Definitely on a different time frame. They were also proud to tell us that we were the first foreigners to stay there. That was fairly apparent given the way they fawned over Xochi. Aileen had to work even harder here to spend time with her daughter than she had on land.

We were served "snacks" (a light dinner, really) on the balcony in front of our rooms followed by a large dinner. I had noticed that the boy assigned to serve us always gave everyone two forks. I asked Rahul to ask him why, as he didn't speak any English. His answer was, "I thought all Westerners eat with two forks!" He must have read that in some strange "guide to Westerners" book. I was glad we had asked, otherwise I'd still be thinking them odd for giving us the two forks and they'd think us odd for using them.

After our stressful days on the water of food, reading, playing Cranium, entertaining Xochi, looking for crocodiles and more food, we crashed early both nights. We asked our crew so many questions about the island and the village that they offered to take us on a tour of it Sunday morning. We spent two hours wandering around it was the highlight of the trip for me. We saw the villagers (about 4000 on the island) preparing the rice and storing it with various hand powered machines or completely by hand. We met village children who followed Xochi (or were they more fascinated by the stroller? clearly Westerners are too lazy to carry their own children), took pictures of them and showed them on the digital camera screen, to many smiles.

I was flabbergasted by the beautiful bright saris the women wore while doing all this manual labor. As Rahul and Aileen packed up Xochi and her accoutrements, Susan and I wandered a bit further into boys playing cricket. A ball came straight for Susan, accompanied with the shout of "Catch!", a test she quickly passed. For the next few minutes the boys shouted "Come play" to us, but how in the world does one PLAY cricket, anyway?

Xochi's entourage

A final few hours of food and flying water and we were headed back home to Calcutta. (The crew kept bringing bottles of water over to us, which would quickly fall off the table in the wind. We would prop them up between items, the crew would see there was no water on the table and bring more. We had 9 full one liter bottles scattered around the boat when we disembarked."

That evening we attended a party at the couple's apartment across the hall (can't beat the commute!) and were entertained by stories from other American expats, especially Debbie's story of buying a Christmas tree in Calcutta from an Indian dwarf in a Santa hat. How do you top that? Maybe by overhearing later that night as an English guy told the rest of the group that his daughter was "into flip flop dancing - I mean hip hop dancing!"