Bengal Basin: overview

This midsized, tropical sea basin is hotter and wetter than anywhere in Earth's equatorial zone. Air pressure is 1.6 atmospheres, retaining heat and moisture and upping the maximum practical flight-weight. Many midsized mammals glide, and gigantic birds abound, some intelligent.

No full tour yet! Just notes on regions and local features.

India and Bengal Valley

Milky rivers from the great ice cap of Tibet--the size of Greenland.

the mild upland forests of the Indian Plateau, formerly the Ganges and Indus Valleys

the cool high grasslands and scattered woods of the Deccan Highlands. The Western Ghats are now snowy in winter; even the Easterns can have snow flurries.

The sweltering rainforest of the Bengal Valley--over a million square km. The upper reaches, not far below our Bangladesh, may be suitable for humans; the lower valley is emphatically not. Ground level here is a stifling, dripping, gloomy maze of mangrove buttresses. No matter! Megaparrots do just fine--weaving treetop villages, cultivating fruit and nut trees (and fruiting, parasitic vines: much faster to breed than trees living centuries).

Greatest city in the Basin is New Calcutta, on the Bengal River Delta. In this steamy swamp, semiaquatic otters and treetop parrots have built a strange two-tier port. This biraciality is less cosmopolitan than Egeria to the south (which includes several cooler-zone peoples, like humans and giant ravens) but it's still a fascinating town.

The snows of Adam's Peak, 6300 m (21,000') high, crowning the Sri Lanka Mountains. Concentric eco-rings surround its glaciers: alpine desert, fern-fells, cloud forest. The west slope is drier, with open woods and meadows--the upper Mannan Valley resembles our India, with a heavily human population. Indians who didn't stay put and adapt to the cooler climate to the north migrated here as well as the upper Bengal Basin.

Around the Sea...

The rugged Nikitin Islands off the Bengal Delta. Hot rainforests. Parrot villages, with giant otters fishing the coasts.

To the south, the Osborne Islands, long rocky ridges heaving from the sea like frozen red stormwaves. Still very hot, but drier; open forest and savanna, with bare cliffs in spots. Quite African except for the dense air and resulting megafliers and gliders. Some humans, a tall slender heat-adapted breed; but most of the people here are still avian or otters.

The odd, twin isthmi of Chagosia to the west and Ninety to the east. Lower than the Sri Lanka Range, these twin necks of cooler land between and above the steamy lowlands are a bit like old Ceylon's hills; mild forested plateaus. Tea does well on the slopes. The Ninety Mts cast a weak rainshadow on the east shore of Bengal: rainforest instead of downpourforest. Only half the hurricanes! But on the west shore, storm after storm hits the slopes of the Maldive, Chagos and Rodrigues Mts, endlessly drenching the forest-slopes. You have to be semi-aquatic to live here. Most of the people are giant Amazonian otters. Even megaparrots get sick of the rain...

The spectacular south coast: red cliffwalled desert "fjords" where transverse cracks cut deep into the Amsterdam Range. Not a true desert; winter rains are moderate, but evaporation's high in the hot dry season. Trees huddle along watercourses in the canyons. Much of the bare rock's just cliffs and landslide-scars. This is jagged, tectonically active country--fracture zones flanking a rift.

Egeria Valley, the deepest of those fjords: either

1. A cliffwalled gorge where goods can be portaged twenty km over a low pass between the Bengal and Crozet Seas. The "port" of Egeria arranges transport; caravans, wagons, or a railway? Depends on the level of technology.
2. A cliffwalled gorge with a canal painfully dug between the two seas. The port of Egeria thrives on the tolls from the canal.
3. A salt river! The Bengal Sea, filled to brimming by the torrential rains of the north, spills south into the Crozet Sea, dropping a few dozen meters; an easy passage south, but requiring towing-teams to pass upstream. The port of Egeria will thrive on the towing tolls. On the other hand, the southern Bengal is dry and has a high evaporation rate. It may be in balance and no higher than the Crozet Sea.
4. A narrow but true strait, with sea levels equal on both sides. The port of Egeria will be huge and prosperous; the Bengal Sea will be geographically AND economically part of the great African Ocean basin.

The following route snakes around Siphonia, covering most features (under construction)

1. Arctic Valleys, sea level to 3 km high
2. Atlantic Ocean (our N. and S.E. Atlantic), sea level
3. African Ocean (S. Atlantic plus W Indian Ocean), sea level
4. Bengal Sea (N. Indian Ocean), sea level
5. Australian Ocean (E. Indian Ocean, Tasman Sea), sea level
6. Davis Sea (S. Indian Ocean), sea level
7. Anzac Basins (N.Z. to Australia), 0.5-2.5 km high
8. Mornington Sea (S.E. Pacific) sea level
9. Nazca Seas (E. Pacific), sea level to 1 km high
10. Agassiz Basin (S. Pacific), 1 km down
11. Pacific Ocean (central & N. Pacific), 1 km down
12. East Asian Seas, 1-3.5 km high
13. Javan Seas, 0.5-2.5 km high
14. Australia, 4-5 km high
15. Amazon Highlands and Andean Cap, 4-8 km high
16. African Highlands, 5-6 km high
17. Antarctic Cap, 4-5 km high (no, not 7-8!)
18. European and Siberian Highlands, 4-6 km high
19. Caribbean Lakes, 2-5 km high
20. Canadian Highlands, 4-6 km high

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