The Water Flows: A trip to the river Kangsabati

[ Note: If the pictures are loading slow, you can always view and enjoy them thorugh this link: https://plus.google.com/104368876613980559108/posts/SP8eQBerZ3K ]

River Kangsabati, or Cossye/Kossye as it is commonly known, originates from Purulia district, West Bengal, India. On its journey to the river Haldi, it curves smoothly through a large part of south-west Bengal, drenching the usually dry areas with its gentle touch. Big old towns with historical importance, such as Medinipur and Kharagpur, are situated on its bank. The river has been gradually shrunk now due to various reasons, and it can be mistaken as a small slow stream for most of the year. But as we always know, even a small pool of water supports millions of lives - from microorganisms to large mammals. So in our journey by the less disturbed banks of Kangsabati, we tried to rediscover what this river is capable of. We mainly searched for flora and fauna that dwell the river and its bank, as well as rocks, sands and other natural deposits which are available throughout the river’s course. But somehow, in the end, the tour didn't remain in the predefined boundary of a trip. It became a way to understand the Nature and its subtle vastness.

Our team, based in Medinipur, planned to explore as much area of the river bank as we could. But due to excess heat and humidity, we couldn't start before the sun went down. We thought of covering the part that was nearest to the town, and started at 4:30 pm in a well-lit and warm afternoon. Unfortunately, to our utmost disappointment, we found that as afternoon gradually falls, the sand bank nearest to the town becomes modified into a picnic spot as well as lovers’ sanctuary! And as the inevitable side effect, there are countless polyethylene bags and other debris, flying, floating on river and lying on the sand, ruining the bank completely. With heavy hearts and less time in hand, we went in search of a lonely part of the bank, preferably to the upper course, where the plastics won’t come floating towards us.

A brief search and rough ride later, we found a place which was almost lonely (and so, natural and clean) one. It was near the rail bridge. Wasting no time, we quickly checked the landscape materials on the bank, as well as tried to find some lives on the shiny sands and mighty rocks. We noticed huge deposits of fine-grade sand, river gravels and laterite chunks! The laterite deposit were almost endless! The whole bank of one side, it seemed, was based on laterite.

After checking the bank, we progressed towards the river flow.

Due to rain, the water was a bit cloudy, and the flow speed was high. We measured the flow using floating ball method, and the mean flow speed was 0.4926 m/s (2.03 s was taken to complete 1 m of distance). That calculates to 1773.4 meters per hour.

It wasn’t possible for us to locate fishes in the broad river, so we attempted a trick! We put some fish feeder in a homemade net, and tied the net with a stick. Then, we dipped the stick in the riverbed where the flow was a bit slow, in such a manner that the net with the foods would float in the water, but would stay at a fixed position at a place. We hoped that the strong smell will attract fishes, and we waited.

But the shallow part of river did not had much of fish to show up (we didn’t go to the deeper part as it was afternoon and we weren’t keen to take another bath) so all we came up with was only one kind of fish. It was most probably the Indian Glassy fish, Parambassis ranga.

At some places, where some water is trapped into rock formations and the flow is not much, we found mainly two types of plants: Marsilea and Hydrilla.

The river and its surroundings, maybe pleased with our efforts, didn’t disappoint much though. We found a huge colony of tadpoles who were just beginning to turn into tiny frogs!

 We also found many kind of live shells and clams.

At last, we had to head for home. Not only we are taking back some wonderful experience with us, but we are also promising that we'll return soon. Till then, goodbye!

P.S. You can now see a video of the river, and the tadpoles respectively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18P9BnhG7RY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmVxreWOUZQ