Mary was very excited this morning when she came down to breakfast. They had peanut butter on the breakfast buffet. Good old American comfort food. Yeah!
When we headed out of Kolkata (Calcutta) the countryside was very different than most of what we have seen in India. Lots of water. I couldn't tell if these were fishponds or what but there was a lot of water everywhere. Maybe just water from the Ganges Delta. Very picturesque.
However, that was pretty much it for positives for our Sundarbans trip. Sometimes when things don't go smoothly we just call it an Adventure. This trip was more of an Ordeal.
The drive from Kolkata to the Sundarbans was supposed to be 4 hours. However, we ran into road construction that cost us a half hour. Then the driver missed a turn and went 25 minutes the wrong way before turning around and going back. Cost us well more than an hour.
We finally made it to the river to catch our boat for a 2 hour boat ride to our hotel. We were the only passengers on the large boat but the local ferries were rather small and pretty loaded.
Life along the river gave us some good photo opportunities.
We were so late that we missed our afternoon tour, except that the Indian Government cancelled all tours in the area because of weather, so there was no tour anyway.
November 9We were to also have a full day tour scheduled but that too was cancelled. It rained hard all day and the wind blew hard. Since we had both come down with bad colds we spent the day sleeping in the room.
That night the Cyclone Bulbul hit. Yes, a cyclone. Unending roaring winds, slamming doors, glass breaking, metal roofs blown off (at least that's what it sounded like). Pretty intense.
November 10
This morning when we got up our bathroom had water and lots of leaves in it. There was a large hole for a fan that had been plugged by a Styrofoam piece, but that piece had been blown out by the cyclone. But very soon a man came up to clean the bathroom, without us asking them. Maybe this happened before. There were also a number of trees down and the area in front of our building that had two ponds and a large terrace/patio area was one large pond.
We were scheduled for a 9:00 am boat ride through the Sundarbans, but that also was cancelled. So we were going to take the boat back to the jetty to catch our ride back to Kolkata that morning. However, the road to the jetty was blocked with fallen trees, so our driver could not get to the jetty. So we didn't head out until 2:00 pm. Minimal delays on the return but it was still a long trip. Didn't get to the hotel until 8:00 pm. All things considered it was a bust. But we tried.
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