ESCAPE FROM CITY

Trip Date: 2nd January, 2010
Location: Habiganj, Sylhet

Musfiq came to me and asked whether I wanted to goto Satchari National Park for a one day trip. At that time, I didn’t have much idea about where it is and what it is exactly. But hey, trips are never bad, so why not. And just like that I agreed. The usual trip suspects were also called upon, but at the end, the group looked like this: Musfiq, Anupom, Tapos, Jubair, Shafayet, Simin and me(cutting out all the drama, uncertainties and last minute dropouts). So the plan was finalized, a micro(bus) was rented, and we agreed to start as early as possible: 8:30AM – yes thats quite early for us(infact it was too early, as we found out). And so without much reasoning and thinking we were ready for the one day trip.

Actually, I had a few reasons of my own to go. This was the first weekend of the new year, and I wanted to set the tone right for this year. I plan to do lot of travelling this year (fingers crossed), and what better way to start. Another reason was this blog. At the end of last year, Pavel and I got motivated to start a travel blog. He loves photography, I pretended to love writing and we both like travelling. I am still unsure what reasoning we had, but starting a travel blog seemed very logical at that time. So we setup this blog, and I even wrote a poem (well sort of) to act as a place holder, and then nothing much happened. This blog was dying even before we started it. So, before it was too late, I wanted to goto a trip, so that I can write something here, and prove to myself (and my beloved friends who are certain that this is not going to work) that this is not a lost project!  Anyway, with all these good intentions (and pressure), I sat to do some research on Satchari National Park on the night before the trip. All I knew was that it was a protected forest, not far away from Srimongal and Lawachara National Park. Given that I didn’t have much high hopes about the place, I was surprised with what I found.

I started by browsing my copy of the Bradt Travel Guide on Bangladesh to get an overview of the place. I must add, this guide is an amazingly up-to-date travel book on Bangladesh. I was always able to get something useful out of it no matter which part of the country I was interested in. After that I googled around and found these two: link1 and link2. I was very impressed with this post. It had some amazing pictures and video clips of Satchari National Park.

But by far, I found the best introduction to the place in Nishorgo’s Annotated Trail Brochure of Satchari National Park (I purchased the brochure from the information center in the park with Tk.25):

“Satchari National Park has been established to preserve the remaining natural hill forest patch of Raghunandan Hill Reserve Forest. ‘Satchari’ means seven streams, which flow through the forest and form important catchments. The Park is located at Chunarughat Thana under Hobiganj District in Sylhet Division. It is nearly 130 km northeast of Dhaka on the former Dhaka-Sylhet highway and 60km southwest of Srimongal town. This is a tropical mixed-evergreen forest where majority of the smaller under-story trees are evergreen and the large dominant trees are deciduous. The National Park was established in 2005 under the Wildlife (Preservation Amendment) Act, 1974 with an area of 243 ha. Past surveys show the presence of 197 species, of which 149 species are bird, 24 species are mammals, 18 species are reptiles and 6 species are amphibians. Occurrence of this large amount of bird species makes it a bird watchers paradise. The colorful Tipra ethnic community resides within the Park.”

Having gathered some information about the Park, I went to sleep super excited knowing that the place will be more amazing to watch if we can make it early. But we are never good at starting early and this trip wasn’t any exception. We ended up leaving Dhaka at around 11:30AM. There were many reasons for the delay, but the general consensus was that it was Anupom who was to be blamed for this – a claim that Anupom strongly denies! The journey to Hobiganj was enjoyable and relaxed. The Dhaka traffic was less than usual, and we were out of the city relatively quickly. We stopped at a road side tea stall (while our vehicle was refilling gas), and also had some good coffee at Ujanbhati (a highway restaurant). If you haven’t had coffee there before, it is highly recommended you do. We skipped lunch but we compensated that with frequent intake of junk food. We didn’t have any problem with directions – thanks to my research and Anupom’s local knowledge, but frankly, I think it was mostly because Musfiq knew the directions.

Going to Satchari National Park was relatively easy. It took us around three hours to reach. We took the Dhaka-Sylhet Highway (N2). Just after crossing Madhabpur Bazaar, we turned right at the Saiham Circle, taking the old Dhaka-Sylhet highway (N204). After going a short distance towards Chunarughat, the road headed right into The Satchari National Park.

View Larger Map

We reached Satchari at around half past two in the afternoon. Ofcourse, we wanted to get there earlier but the timing wasn’t as bad as I thought. Being a relatively unknown location, it was quite calm and less crowded. Though we noticed a couple of buses and a few cars, it was relatively peaceful. My initial impression of the place was that of a traditional forest picnic spot. Also, it showed that the place was relatively new in the “picnic” business. The small huts and counters at the entry still looked new. The road passing through the forest looked great. It reminded me of The Lawachara Forest. All I could hope was that all this picnic craze doesn’t harm the delicate ecosystem of this beautiful little forest.

Since this is a Nishorgo project, I knew we will be able to get ourselves a guide. And it wasn’t too difficult to get one. As soon as we were off the microbus, we were approached by a few local people. The Nishorgo ID card hanging on their shirts confirmed that they were trained guides. Our guide was Alamgir. He was a very gentle and friendly guy indeed, and was very eager to show us what Satchari had to offer. Getting a guide for any Nishorgo project is a very good idea indeed. Not only it makes the trip more informative and interesting, but it also helps the local community with much needed cash flow. It took us Tk.300 to hire him for two hours. Most of the guides are local people specially trained under the Nishorgo project. There was an entry fee of Tk.20 for each person, and we were all set to start our forest trekking.

There are three trails of varying duration in the Satchari National Park. The first is a half an hour trail, the second is a one hour and the third is a three hours long trail. We wanted to go for the three hour one, but we didn’t have that much time before sunset. But on the other hand, the one hour trail was too short and we knew it will leave us wanting to explore more of the forest. After hearing about our concern, Alamgir came up with a customized trail for us. This trail will take us two hours, and was a combination of the one hour and three hour trail. He promised us to show the more remote areas. We entered the forest through the three hour trail start point. The half an hour trail also started from there. Interestingly this was also the exit point for the one hour trail that started from further along the highway.

The environment in the forest was very enjoyable indeed. The trail was initially a small mud trail that swirled into the forest. As we moved in, we could feel the air getting heavier and colder. It didn’t take us much long when the highway noise was completely shut, and all we could hear was the sound of the forest. We could hear various birds twitting and screaming – made me wonder what it would be like to be there in the morning when bird activity is at its peak. Some of the birds that I saw were very colorful. I remember a group of green pigeon like flock that were screaming as if they were having a heated discussion about something.

Alamgir was very enthusiastic to show us the different plants and trees around us. Some of the names that I remember are Agar tree (used to make agarpati), Ban Supari, Teak tree, Shegun tree and Kak Dumur. Having Alamgir made the trekking much more fun. Frankly, without him, it would have been just a walk in the forest. He actually made us interested to discover the different plants and trees around us.

If you are in Satchari, it will be very hard to miss the large population of spiders in the forest. I must admit, the population and density of the spiders in the forest was way too high than my comfort zone. The biggest and scariest among them was the Giant Wood Spider. We were fortunate to trace a few of these along the side of our trail.

We were almost half way into our trail when Alamgir stopped us all, and asked us to be quiet. We were not sure what was happening, when he pointed towards the tree tops to the right-side of the trail. That didn’t help us much either until we finally saw something moving. He slowly led us into the forest, away from the trail and towards the trees (Please note that moving away from  the trail is not encouraged and is not considered ecologically friendly behavior). This is when we saw a small group of what seemed to me like monkeys. But they seemed to have very long tails and were darker in color. Also they seemed to be larger than normal average monkeys. It was hard to get a good view of them, but they were most probably a kind of Langurs, one of the endangered species of the forest. Unfortunately, we were not able to get good photos of them. Nevertheless, we had a thrilling experience. This is specially true for Anupom, who seemed to have a stronger connection with apes than the rest of us. Later in the trail, this connection was sparked more than once, as we managed to see a few more groups of monkeys.

Unlike the first half of the trail, the later half was more wider and sandy with dense vegetation and trees in both sides. We got to know from Alamgir that this is actually a dried stream bed. During rainy season, water currents flow over it which are almost 4ft to 8ft in depth. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering the beauty of this place in the rainy seasons. Nevertheless, the stream bed trail was one of the more memorable part of the trail. The rest of the trail was through the stream bed, until at the last moment when we moved out of the sandy trail that led us out of the forest and we found the highway infront of us.

As promised by Alamgir, our trail lasted for about two hours. We got out of the forest about 500m (I am not that sure about the distance) away from our entry point. The walk back, by the side of the highway was enjoyable as well. By that time, the sun was setting and it was getting chilly. The light and the environment was an absolute pleasure to experience.

They have a well maintained information center near the entry that we visited. As we found out, it had some interesting brochures and maps of the forest. Other than that they also had a few Nishorgo products like t-shirts and caps. We were encouraged to buy a few brochures as all the earnings go to the local people. I found the brochures very informative and they will definitely help me if I plan to visit Satchari Forest again. It is important to understand that this is part of Nishorgo’s initiative to promote ecotourism. A vital goal of ecotourism is to provide livelihood to the local people through ecologically friendly tourism. This is also where we said goodbye to Alamgir. I do not think this trip would have been as much fun and informative without Alamgir.

One thing that we missed in this trip was to visit the nearby Tiprapara village. This is a village consisting of 24 Tripura families who completely depend on the forest for their livelihood. However, we did manage to get some time to stop at a nearby tea estate. Most of the forest is surrounded by different tea estates so stopping by one was a natural thing to do. We said cheese, took some photos and were quickly back on the road to Dhaka.

Looking back, the trip wasn’t one of those totally-out-of-the-world-experience kind of trip. But I can surely say that all of us had a great time. When Musfiq first asked me to join the trip, my expectation from Satchari wasn’t much. After all it is not a very well-known tourist or trekking spot. But if you are the kind who has a thing for wild life and trekking, it can be a very refreshing one day trip. I do not think I knew so much about the flora and fauna of the region before this trip. There can be nothing better to escape from the city than to pass some time into the wild.

Satchari National Forest is a very good example of how eco-tourism can work in our country. It is one of the few places where eco-tourism is being promoted to preserve the forest and also to help the local community make a living out of tourism – without damaging the ecosystem. However, we also need to be aware that it is our responsibility as tourists to respect and preserve such forests. We cannot afford to harm the fragile eco-system of such regions by careless and irresponsible behavior. Thus, I would like to end by pointing out (from the Satchari National Park Trail Brochure) the do’s and donot’s of visiting such forests/parks:

I hope this post helps the readers to discover Satchari National Park. And I also hope that this will encourage all of us to become eco-friendly tourists as well. Your comments and feedbacks about this post are most welcome. There are already a few places that we have visited by now, and I am definitely going to write about them as well. So seeya then

Photography Credits: Hasan Musfiqur Rahman
Photo Selection and Editing: Pavel Shahriar