When we think about the Sundarbans, we get excited, and just hearing the name makes me feel like we’re in a magical place. It’s the best place for people who want to see tigers in India and Bangladesh. The UNESCO World Heritage Site and Tiger Project conservation area is the best place. There are tigers and other wild animals that live in the Sundarbans. You can see them relaxing in the salty water and a lot more. In the Sundarbans, there are 260 types of birds and endangered species like the estuary crocodile and the Indian Python. This is because of the dense mangrove forest and huge salty mudflats that make the area unique. However, many other exciting things about the Sundarbans will make you want to go there right away.
The interesting facts about Sundarbans
To learn more about the Sundarbans, look at these exciting and amazing facts:
The Sundarbans in India are ten times bigger than Venice. There are 102 islands on the Indian side of the Sundarbans Forest, 54 inhabited. The rest of the forest covers an area of 4000 square kilometers, which is a lot.
Coastal mangrove forests in the Sundarbans region of Bangladesh and India cover an area of about 10,000 square kilometers. This makes it the world’s largest mangrove forest on the coast (6,000 km2 ).
The Sundarbans Tiger Reserve is home to an estimated 400 of the world’s most beautiful and fierce Royal Bengal Tigers. So, get away from the noise of the city jungles and go to the only place on Earth where you can see most of this enormous animal.
On the Sundarbans, the largest island is Gosaba, 13 feet above sea level. It is also the last one with people living on it, so it is essential (Indian part). You’d find it in the middle of a forest reserve that was very far from the city. This even though the island is cut off from the rest of India. There are still schools, hospitals, and more on the island.
The water level changes from 6 to 10 feet during high and low tides in the Sundarbans. This is called a Tidal Phenomenon.
In one of the Sundarbans’ villages, the man-eating tigers are thought to have killed most of the families. This village is home to India’s hardy Tiger Widows, which are very strong. Anglers must get permission from the reserve forest office department before going into the core zone forests for fishing. The Sundarbans aren’t going to scare you. You can quickly go there on your own.
There are a lot of tiny organisms called phytoplankton, which look like lights in the dark of the new moon because they’re small. In the Sundarbans, taking a night safari should be on your list of things to do.
Cyclone Sidr ripped through the Sundarbans in 2007, killing 40% of the vegetation. They had to stop farming in the Sundarbans because of the salty water brought in by the high tide. People in the area set up dikes right away to keep high tide waters from encroaching on their village, which is a way to help the Sundarbans National Park.
Forest rangers must permit anyone to spend time in the Sundarbans.
- There are 1,000 people per square kilometer. This is the same as 1,029 people per square kilometer in West Bengal. The paper “Building resilience for sustainable development of the Sundarbans” says that there has been a rise in population and migration.
- The Sundarbans Tiger Reserve was set up in 1973. The park became a national park on May 4, 1989, and Sundarbans was recently chosen as one of the finalists for the New Seven Wonders of Nature.
- Emilio Salgari’s The Mystery of the Black Jungle, Shib Sankar Mitra’s Sundarbans Arjan Sardar, and ManikBandopadhyay’s Padma Nadir Majhi are all set in the Sundarbans. They show the hardships of village life and the lives of fishers. Amitav Ghosh wrote The Hungry Tide and Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight’s Children. Both of them won the Booker Prize for best book.