Echoes of the Wild: A Journey Through Bangladesh’s Living Forests

Chapter 1 — Solo Rainy-Season Survival in Satchari National Park

Part 1

Rain fell in pages the morning I entered Satchari. The world outside was a wet, slow-moving film: raindrops chaining down broad leaves, water beading on bamboo and sliding off in tiny silver rivers, puddles widening into new, temporary ponds overnight. The air smelled of earth and old leaves, and every breath I took tasted of wet wood and green life. I had walked into the season of the forest that shows you everything and hides most of it at the same time.

I carried only a light pack that day — a camera slung over my shoulder, a rainproof notebook sealed in a plastic sleeve, a GPS with a patchy battery, a small first-aid kit, and three sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Part of me resented the minimalism; another part felt it was right. Minimal gear forces attention. It forces you to listen.

My childhood along the Padma and the charlands of Rajshahi had taught me how to find patience in wide places — how to wait and watch until movement becomes meaning. Those river days were my first schools: following the tracks of otters in soft mud, learning the way a marsh bird will suddenly flatten itself when a crocodile’s shadow passes, practicing the simple habit of noticing. Engineering taught me to plan. The field taught me to adapt. On that damp morning in Satchari, both skills were necessary.

The trail into the reserve was slick with a recent downpour. My boots made soft thuds and gentle slurps as I walked, each step leaving a brief indent that filled with water. The canopy above filtered light into a green twilight. Ferns trembled on the forest floor. A distant gibbon barked, a fragment of sound that vibrated through hollow trunks.

I moved quietly, aware of the way your body both belongs and does not belong in the wild. You belong because you can breathe its air and step on its soil; you do not when the animals there don’t take your existence for granted. I kept my camera low against my chest, a reminder of the thin line between observer and intruder. I wanted images — someday — but not at the cost of making a fatal mistake.

An hour in, the path narrowed into a tunnel of bamboo and fallen leaves. The soil underfoot turned to a soft, sludgy compound that tried to hold my boots in place. I was watching the trail for prints and the broken stems that suggest recent passage when I heard a different sound: a deep, wet cracking of foliage, the kind that only comes from a large body moving through dense undergrowth.

My skin prickled. I froze, breath shallow. A shadow moved among the trees, larger than anything I expected to meet on a solo survey. There was a moment — an elastic, frozen moment where the forest itself seemed to adjust its rhythm to mine.

Then I saw it: the bear.

It was farther than I first thought, maybe a hundred meters away, but its mass made it feel much closer. Dark, heavy, slick with rain; the bear pressed through the undergrowth with a slow deliberation, knocking small branches aside like a careless commuter through a crowd. I could hear the stink of damp fur and something else — the metallic, autumn-like scent of damp earth and foraging. The bear’s head turned; it sniffed the air. I could not tell whether it had detected me.

The simplest and truest rule about dangerous animals had never felt so clear: do not run if you can avoid it; do not make sudden movements. Every species has a language, and most will escalate to attack only if you speak in a language they interpret as threat. My job was to speak in the quiet dialect of retreat.

So I did.

Slow, deliberate steps backward, weight distributed, body angled sideways so I seemed less like a challenger. I kept my hands visible and low, palms open — an old trick that looks less aggressive than clenched fists. My breath was small and measured. The bear sniffed again, its nostrils flaring like small black moons against damp fur. Branches clicked as it shifted. For a moment it seemed to look right at me. I felt the air compress with the impossible nearness of something wild.

A part of my brain measured escape: the stream. I had seen it as I entered the trail, swollen and angry from the rain: some places were likely five feet deep, with a current that would not be forgiving. It was also the only place that might buy me time. If an animal chose not to cross rushing water, the current might be a deterrent. If I could get across quickly and scramble the far bank, perhaps I could put a solid obstacle between me and the bear while I caught my breath. It was a risky bet born of a desperate, logical mind.

I waited for the bear to turn or to relax. It took a step, heavy and unfazed, then another. Each of my backward steps was a negotiation: one inch yield for one inch more of safety. When it finally shifted its attention to a different sound and drifted apart, I broke into motion.

I ran.

Running in that mud felt foolish and clumsy. Roots rose like hidden ropes, and the ground sucked at my heels. I reached the stream bank in a breathless few strides and leapt. The water closed over my knees, then my waist. The current grabbed me like a hand, pulling at my legs and threatening to throw me into submerged logs and rocks. My camera bag slapped against my side, heavy with soaked cloth. For an instant panic rose young and sharp: the world inverted and the water became an animal of its own.

I fought instinct, shifted my weight to float when I could, used my hands to pivot and kick toward a calmer patch. Mud and leaves scraped the back of my calves; water rushed in my ears. It is strange how immediate the mind becomes in such moments, how previous training—basic swimming, knowledge of river behavior, some forgotten exercises—resurfaces. I will not pretend it was graceful. It was bare survival: a series of small, controlled movements stitched together by will.

When I clawed myself up on the opposite bank, soaked and covered in sticky brown mud, the forest seemed to inhale and exhale slowly around me. The bear’s presence felt like a memory already, as if the forest had allowed me to pass a test and then moved on. My fingers trembled; my hands had scraped bark. My camera had not been used. The device hung uselessly on my chest, beads of water trembling on its lens.

I sat for a while on a fallen log, letting the adrenaline drain into the earth. It is strange: fear and gratitude can twine into the exact same emotion. I was grateful to be alive, and acutely aware of how small a margin separates a good story from a tragedy. The forest had taught me to respect that margin.

After an hour’s slow recovery, I continued along a flattened track that hugged a ridge. The rain had lessened to a steady drizzle. The trail was no longer a single track; it had been crisscrossed by animals and humans alike — some of those human marks were recent campsites, small and hastily abandoned. I noted them with the careful eye of someone cataloguing danger signs. Poachers leave traces that the forest itself cannot entirely conceal: snares on twine, abandoned fire pits, broken beer bottles half-buried in the moss. Each sign was a story of encounter and conflict.

By late afternoon, wet and hungry, I moved toward a clearing where a small herd of cattle grazed under the watch of a man with a stick. The man looked at me with a blank appraisal and then turned back to his charge. Nearby, the carcass of a young calf lay half-consumed. A pack of wild dogs worked at it in ragged coordination, their ribs showing beneath mottled fur. They were efficient; animals in the wild do not waste energy at feasts. I ducked into the cover of a thicket and waited, watching them for the better part of an hour.

Observing predators feed is a lesson in economy and normalization. Where humans often anthropomorphize, the wild does not ask for sympathy. The dogs paused, looked up once at a distant sound, and returned to gnawing. I did not step forward. There was no reason to disturb that balance. My camera remained unused, hanging like an amulet against my chest.

When dusk began to press blue against the leaves, I made for a known ranger’s post. The forest after such encounters felt qualitatively different — a place that had taken and given back something. The ranger’s hut was simple, warmed by a small stove, and smelling faintly of dhoop and cooked rice. We exchanged cautious stories. They listened to my description of the bear and the snares with the professional distance of people who lived with such events.

“Monsoon makes animals bolder,” one ranger said, his voice flat with the rhythm of daily affront. “People come less, animals wander more. You were lucky.”

Luck, I thought, is often an overlay on preparation. I had prepared in small ways — boots, knowledge of water behavior, restraint — but luck had softened one corner of chance into safety. The forest rewards experience and punishes arrogance.

That night I slept on a simple cot at the ranger post, the roof pattering as rain eased into a soft, steady hymn. I dreamed of water and tunnels of green. I woke before dawn and, with the first thin light, set out again. The next day I intended to probe deeper; the first incident had not broken my appetite for discovery so much as sharpened its edge.

Part 2

The morning after the storm, Satchari breathed differently. The rain had thinned into mist, and a gauze of fog hung above the forest floor. Each tree stood freshly washed, and birds were beginning to test their voices again. The air was cool enough to sting the lungs at first breath, and the smell — wet wood, crushed leaves, distant orchids — filled every sense.

I thanked the rangers for shelter and set out again, careful this time to stay within a mapped section of the park. The trails, though calmer, were still slick. My boots made a soft sucking sound with every step, and vines brushed my shoulders like cautious hands. A squirrel darted up a trunk ahead of me. Overhead, a pair of drongos argued noisily, their tails cutting ribbons through the mist.

For the first hour, I tried to move with intention — to observe, not intrude. I noted where certain butterflies sheltered in pockets of light and how mushrooms sprouted in near-perfect circles on fallen logs. Even the small, ordinary details mattered; each species, each sign of adaptation was a note in the forest’s song.

But deep down, my nerves still hummed with the memory of the bear. Every snapping twig behind me made my muscles tighten. I realized how thin the line is between the researcher and the prey. The forest is indifferent to our intentions — it reads only movement, sound, and scent. And in that hierarchy, humans rank low.

By midday, the sun broke through for the first time in two days. Light fell like liquid gold across the clearing. Steam rose from the ground where the warmth met the damp soil, and the smell of petrichor thickened. I stopped near a shallow brook and washed my face. The reflection that looked back at me was smeared with mud, the eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep but bright with something else — defiance, maybe, or awe.

That was the moment I understood the real reason I came. It wasn’t just for photography or for data to fill a report. It was to meet the limits of myself and measure how much courage lived beyond fear.

I ate one of the sandwiches, soggy but edible, and wrote quick notes in my field diary:

Observation: Rain subsiding. Stream levels stable.

Wildlife: Bird calls increasing. Drongo, green bee-eater, squirrel, possible python tracks near fallen bamboo.

Condition: Good. Camera safe. Adrenaline gone, calm returning.

Thought: “Forest rewards the quiet mind.”

When I packed again, the weight of the camera felt less like a burden. I even took a few photographs — dew collecting on a spider’s web, sunlight caught in drops on a fern, the reflection of clouds in a pool left by the night’s storm. Small things, but real.

Still, every sense stayed alert. A day earlier I’d nearly been a meal or a story told by a ranger to a new volunteer. That knowledge doesn’t fade quickly. Even the gentle sounds — frogs calling, birds preening, insects tapping on bark — carried an edge, as though the forest whispered both welcome and warning.

In the afternoon, the trail forked toward a shallower section of the main stream, a safer crossing to circle back toward the entrance. I followed it, enjoying the rhythm of my steps and the ease that had returned. My boots, once soaked, now squelched comfortably with each stride. I hummed softly — an old habit from the charlands, a tune that had no words but carried the feeling of open space.

That’s when I saw something that rooted me in place again.

Across the stream, on a low slope of clay, a set of paw prints cut clearly into the mud — large, deep, unmistakably fresh. The pattern was too broad for dogs. It could only be another bear or possibly a leopard. The prints led from the stream into the dense undergrowth, vanishing into shadows.

I crouched and studied them. The edges were still firm, water just beginning to pool in the indentations — less than an hour old. I felt that familiar tightening in my chest, a pulse between caution and curiosity. Should I follow? Part of me screamed no. The other part — the part that had brought me here — whispered maybe.

I compromised. I followed only far enough to confirm direction. The tracks curved toward a section known locally as “Chhoto Hati Path” — the Little Elephant Trail — named for the occasional visits of migrating elephants. The idea that I might meet elephants, bears, and wild dogs in a single trip filled me with reverence and a sliver of disbelief. The diversity of life concentrated in these few square kilometers was staggering.

But I didn’t push farther. The air in that direction felt heavier, and I’d learned to listen when the forest shifts its tone. I marked the location on my GPS and retreated, walking slow and steady back toward the ranger path.

By the time I reached camp, dusk had set in. The sky was a pale bruise of violet and gray, the first bats looping through the open canopy. I stripped off my soaked jacket, hung it by the fire, and sat cross-legged with a cup of hot tea offered by one of the rangers. The sweetness of jaggery in it tasted like relief.

They asked how the day had gone. I told them about the tracks, about how quiet the forest felt afterward. One of them nodded knowingly. “You’re listening correctly,” he said. “When it’s too quiet, something big is near.”

His words settled deep. Listening correctly — that would become a kind of mantra for me, one that guided every future expedition.

That night I wrote again in my notebook:

Satchari, Rainy Season — survived bear encounter, crossed stream, observed wild dogs, found new tracks. Lesson: fear is not enemy; ignorance is.

When I put down the pen, exhaustion took me. The forest’s soundscape — frogs, crickets, wind in the bamboo — became a single, enormous lullaby.

3. Reflection and Resolution

When I left Satchari after that trip, the monsoon was already beginning to fade. I boarded a local bus still damp with humidity and mud on my boots. As the vehicle rattled along the rural highway, I watched the forest recede through streaked windows, thinking about everything it had given and demanded.

I realized something fundamental: surviving is not exploring. I had endured the forest’s tests but had not really studied it. The camera, though always with me, had captured almost nothing. Observation requires time, patience, and — above all — safety. The rainy season had stripped those away.

Back home, I poured over my notes and maps, sketching the routes, estimating how deep certain sections might be in the dry months, noting where I had heard the densest bird calls. I wanted to return, but differently this time — with structure, backup, and a team.

That was when I called MH Oli and MD Kayes, two friends who shared both curiosity and discipline. Oli, a doctor with a level head and gentle humor, could handle emergencies. Kayes, still a university student, had the sharp eyes and endurance of youth. I told them my plan for a winter expedition: cooler weather, calmer terrain, longer stays. They agreed immediately.

We would return to Satchari not as accidental survivors but as prepared observers — explorers equipped with patience and purpose. I felt a deep thrill when we began assembling equipment: field kits, notebooks, waterproof boots, ropes, sleeping bags, and cameras with extra batteries. The act of packing was like writing a promise to the forest.

In the final days of planning, I kept remembering the ranger’s words: “When it’s too quiet, something big is near.” It sounded almost like advice about life itself. Quiet was the interval where observation deepened; danger and discovery shared the same silence.

As the last of the monsoon clouds thinned into winter clarity, I knew I would return soon. The next chapter of my journey had already begun — not in the forest but in the resolve it had carved inside me.