Bike ride for sacred groves, Basudha

While we were at Basudha we had the oppurtunity to go on a long bike ride to raise awareness for sacred groves.  We rode to a nearby (13km) village to visit a couple of sacred groves and listen to Dr. Deb speak (in Bengali) to the villagers.  There were maybe 40 of us on bikes, a few of us with signs.  The signs were pretty aggressively anti-industry and government, but I can't remember what any of the translations were.
    A sacred grove is a place where a deity is thought to live.  It's taboo to remove anything from them or damage them in any way, thus they're mini-reservations where Dr. Deb has documented several species of plants and animals no longer found in developed areas.  The intersection we're at in this photo was once itself a sacred grove, the banyan tree in the last picture was once a part of it.  When the road was built the Department of Forestry saw fit to plow through it in order to harvest timber.  One tree at the intersection is the last known surviving example and Deb has had no luck in germinating another anywhere else, presumably because the bird whose guts the seed had to pass through is gone too.
     The girl in the green blouse/flowered sari is the same one touching the cobra. She cooked many of our meals and smiled once.  Her sister smiled all the time and cooked the rest of our meals.