We loaded up our belongings on our following (and final) morning and left our modest but lovely eco-lodge to travel to Baikka Beel. By the way, the average temps to 5.9 degrees Centigrade (about 42 degrees Fahrenheit) during our weekend in Srimongal, and we started feeling it at night and in the morning.

In contrast to rivers and canals, the flood plains of the Ganges-Brahmaputra in the eastern Indian provinces of West Bengal and Assam, and in Bangladesh, a beel is a pond with still water. It is part of a successful environmental initiative to preserve Bangladesh’s wetlands and is part of a bigger reservoir of water recognized as a haor (a depression in the ground that floods annually during the monsoon season).

Since 2003, Baika Beel has served as a safe haven, and to promote diversity, native pond forest trees have been planted there. Fish (on which the villagers rely for survival) are more plentiful and massive groups of birds have started returning, including species that had completely disappeared for many years and others that are globally threatened. These changes are due to the community’s ban on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wildlife.

We only saw each lotus flower, which was so vividly pink that I inquired if it was made of plastic because it appeared artificial. See it? The water wasn’t really deep enough for us to get close enough and for me to get a good shot, and my camera’s zoom felt insufficient.