The Sundarbans
The Sundarbans are a forest that the sea visits twice a day: ten thousand square kilometres of mangrove where the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna finally give up and braid into the Bay of Bengal, split between Bangladesh and India, named for the sundari tree that holds it together — and the only mangrove on Earth where the tiger lives, swims between the islands, and takes, some years, a fisherman or a honey collector, who wear masks on the backs of their heads because the tiger attacks from behind, and who pray, before they enter, to Bonbibi, the lady of the forest, whom Hindus and Muslims both ask for the same thing. Around the tiger: spotted deer, crocodiles in the Sela, dolphins in the channels, and a silence broken by birds.
The traveller boards a launch at Khulna or Mongla and gives the forest three days and two nights on the water, which is the only road; goes out at dawn in a small boat with the engine off, when the banks show their prints; walks the beach at Kotka with an armed ranger to the watchtower and the deer; reaches Hiron Point, the sanctuary at the bottom of the world; sees, in winter, the fishermen's temporary town at Dublar Char drying its catch on the sand; and, in all probability, does not see the tiger — which is as it should be — but hears, in every guide's voice, that the tiger sees them.
The Guide's honesty: the Sundarbans are a working forest and a fragile one — the boats are basic and shared, the mosquitoes are a fact, and the forest department's rules (rangers, permits, no landing without escort) are what keeps both the tiger and the visitor alive; a sighting is luck, not a service, and any operator promising one is promising the wrong thing; the cyclones that cross this coast every few years — Sidr, Aila, Amphan — are the reason the mangrove matters to Dhaka, and the reason it is shrinking; the honey and the fish are the villagers' living, not a show; and the season is November to February — the rest is monsoon, mud and closed gates. Go by boat, go quietly, and let the forest keep its cat.