The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest on Earth and the only one with tigers in it, on the delta where the Ganges meets the Bay of Bengal, shared by Bangladesh and India. Around two hundred tigers range an area as large as a small country, so hardly anyone sees one. What you get instead is a forest arranged around an animal that stays out of sight. There is no road in. You board a launch at Khulna or Mongla and sleep aboard two or three days while it threads creeks no road reaches, forest wall sliding past on both sides. Out here the tide runs the day rather than the clock. It drowns and drains the forest twice over, and as the mudbanks come back up the animals come down to the edge; a good guide plans each day around the tide table.
Chital deer are what you see most of, drifting to the bank in herds to browse on fallen mangrove leaves. With the engine off they stand with their ears up, completely still: the clearings that feed them are the clearings the tiger hunts. Kingfishers work the same edges, among them the rust-and-blue brown-winged kingfisher, found in few other places. At Karamjal a raised boardwalk takes you in among the trees on foot, over mud pierced by thousands of breathing roots, crocodiles in pools below. People live all around the forest edge on fishing, crab-catching and honey, their boats left on the mud at low tide. For a few weeks each spring the Mawali go deep in to cut wild comb from the branches, reading the ground for tigers. Most of Bangladesh's wild honey comes out of these trees, and some of the men who go in do not come back. Before they go, Hindus and Muslims alike pray to Bonbibi, the lady of the forest, who protects them from Dakshin Rai, a demon in tiger form. You will most likely leave with nothing but a set of pugmarks pressed into the mud, and the next tide will take even those.