Day Three in the Sundarbans met us with that now-familiar thick heat. But we had acclimated, or at least knew what we needed to keep going into the day.

The section of river we had been on for the past two days was surprisingly industrial. Massive barges geared up for trips from or through the Suez, and dredging boats cleared the sand to extend the second largest port in the country.

Our skiff buzzed us to shore around 9 that morning, and we offloaded at a small shrimping community. 

Date palms shaded the main walkways of the breezy village. Residents pointed out where crocodiles had gotten at some of their chickens the previous night.

A man cut out pieces of silt from one of the banks to build a new break outside of his house – the surrounding rivers had been slowly creeping in.

As we made our way north, we stopped in a small market parlor. Some of the men were playing Karom, a combination of shuffleboard and pool. They made room for us as we sent pieces flying and completely missed the pockets.

McKenna Johnson and I spent the latter half of our visit in the primary school. She was reporting on the art program there, and I shot some video of the student’s clay alligator sculptures.

On our walk back to the skiff, we were swarmed by children. Both my pinkies were occupied by kids, their heads coming up just at my knees.

Back on the boat, we zipped upriver to a massive steel port.

We met our scheduled tuk tuk drivers and piled in for some serious redneck off-roading to our next stop. My head played ping pong with the tuk tuk’s hilariously low ceiling. Claire was beaming the whole ride, but my breakfast started to seem less digested than I had thought.

Our destination was the Bangladesh Environment and Development Society, an NGO focused on sustainability and environmental protection. Nipa palms and fruit trees lined shrimp ponds and terracotta walkways. 

We were led to a lunch of fish, rice and mangrove tea, which led to some serious exhaustion-fueled debates on whether mangrove was a tree or type of forest. It’s the latter, by the way.

We spent the afternoon exploring the campus. Walker, Riley, Adrian and I fished for carp and shrimp, while others swam and played with one of the kittens.

Later, we returned to the port where we trudged through gray mud and planted some trees — an initiative from our hosts to protect the inland villages from flooding. We washed the pounds of mud off of our feet and legs and returned to the boat for a snack — the fish we had caught in the pond that day.

It was laughter, showers and top-deck relaxation that evening. As I was settling into bed, Riley invited me to join the group on a late-night outing on the skiff. 

We drifted down one of the smaller rivers in complete silence. It was the first time I saw stars all trip. There was a droning chatter of bugs and birds and a distinct lack of human voices. The full moon bathed the palms and silty water in soft light.

I went to bed grinning, thinking of what more was to come.