Sundarbans

The Sundarbans is a delta rather than a destination in the usual sense: roughly 10,000 square kilometres of mangrove shared with Bangladesh, of which the Indian side holds a national park and tiger reserve declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Everything here runs on the tide. Boats leave the jetty at Godkhali and thread channels named after the rivers that made them, Matla, Bidya, Durgaduani, past sundari and genwa trees standing on stilt roots, with pneumatophores breaking the mud like a bed of nails.

You do not walk in the core. You sit on a slow diesel launch through the middle of the day, watching for the drag mark where a tiger has crossed a bank, for the flick of a Gangetic dolphin, and for the collared kingfishers and lesser adjutant storks that work the shallows. Fixed viewing points at Sudhanyakhali and Dobanki, the latter reached by a raised canopy walkway, look over sweetwater ponds where chital and wild boar come to drink and where tigers occasionally follow them.

At Sajnekhali the forest department office issues permits and runs a small interpretation centre and a mangrove nursery. On the inhabited islands, honey collectors and crab fishers keep shrines to Bonbibi, the forest guardian, and the boatmen will tell you her story in the long, quiet hours between tides.