BootsnAll Travel Network



Return to Bhagalpur?

Until I have booked the flight, nothing is cast in stone. I do not need to go to Thailand or to SE Asia—I could go anywhere in the world. My only constraint is the budget: £1500 all-in. The destination and duration of the trip depend solely on the cost factor. Back in 1984, I travelled around Africa for nine months for about half that amount.

Twenty years ago, round about now, a friend and I visited the town of Bhagalpur in Bihar, Northern India, on a school-trip. There we came across our first wild cetaceans, quite by surprise: Ganges river dolphins (Platanista gangetica). To the chagrin of our teachers, for us the trip had turned into an expedition. We stayed behind to conduct an impromptu field-study, released a report: Operation Platanista (which makes me cringe nowadays…) and spent a good year after that following up on the ‘project’.

On a whim I considered a return to Bhagalpur. It could be tied into a trip to Bhangladesh where apparently the dolphins are doing astonishingly well, scavenging around rubbish tips by the river bank (or so I read in Mark Shand’s book: ‘River Dog’). On our travels, we also heard rumours that these dolphins ‘scavenge’, even that they eat half-burned human corpses released into the river. Furthermore, we heard of black-and-white ‘spotted killer dolphins’ that attack swimmers in deserted places on the river. So many people talked about seeing black-and-white dolphins that we spent several days (even weeks) hunting down potential sightings, thinking we might be on the trail of a new sub-species— without success. (Imagine how spooked I was when I watched ‘Star Trek VI’ in 1986 and there in the display behind Captain Kirk and Mister Spock was a black-and-white platanistid. The Montery Bay Aquarium where the movie was filmed maintains there were no such platanistids in the display, but I know what I saw…)

So, I briefly wondered whether I should return to Bhagalpur. Through the rose-tinted specs of my memory, I see the great River Ganga flowing serenely in the light of the rising sun; a dolphin occasionally breaks the surface, as we travel by boat to a temple island to meet a holy man. I had quite forgotten what a hellhole Bhagalpur is. It is in dacoit country, nexus of a wide-spread smuggler network and a political boiling pot. Its population, a million strong twenty years ago, has now doubled. Back then there was barely standing room on the pavement. I remember open sewers and sick people in the streets. When bubonic plague broke out in August 1994, doubtlessly it found fertile ground here. I also remember the smell that hit us in the station: human spit—like faint halitosis— mixed with betel juice. The blood-red stains covered every inch of ground. On the way down to the river we had to take care not to slip on human feces. —Bhagalpur is truly an outer circle of hell.

But it is also the place of the Ganges dolphins, so it is heartening to see that the animals are still around, there is now a even sanctuary of sorts and a local research group. And while Bhagalpur certainly did not strike me as a toursist spot, quote:

‘Tourists can see the Ganges River Dolphin at the Vikramshila Ganges River Dolphin Sanctuary in Bihar. Experience the rare pleasure of seeing the Ganges River Dolphin on India Wildlife Tours.

This, however, most definitely means that I won’t return. Bihar has turned into a tourist trap!

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