Beautiful Green Bangladesh

After Nepal we have had a whistlestop tour of Bangladesh, but not until after a nine hour delay at Kathmandu airport.  That delay allowed us to catch up on a few things and watch some of the Wimbledon Tennis and World Cup Final.  The end of the trip ended with an epic 24 hour journey from northern Bangladesh to Darjeeling, which is our longest journey yet.

In between all that was a fabulous seven days in Bangladesh.  We flew into the capital, Dhaka, but didn’t arrive until 1am so went straight to the hotel.  The next day we went for an explore of Old Dhaka.  We were staying in a lovely part of Dhaka, called Gulshan 2, and the journey started off well.  We were slightly concerned that the auto rickshaw driver locked us in the back as he set off, but we later found out this was for our own safety.  The journey took an hour to go about five miles and was like a very large game of dodgems – at one point we were completely entwined with a truck.

Having got to the old town it was as busy as we were warned it would be.  There are 17 million people on Dhaka and 500,000 cycle rickshaws, all of which must have been in Old Dhaka at the same time.  Even though it is not really geared for tourism, we toured a few spots before heading out onto the River Bariganga on a little row boat.  Our boatman took us out between the massive ferries and other boats, where we watched people plying their trades and kids playing in and on the boats.  It was quite magical, if a little scary,

After a couple of days in Dhaka, we flew to Sylhet in northern Bangladesh.  This is so far off the beaten track, but we went to meet Raj Suttar, who owns our favourite Indian Restaurant in Twyford.  After eating at his restaurant for twenty years he foolishly invited us out to his family town and village when he was going to be there for the summer – be careful what you say when inviting someone, as it may come true!  The three days we spent there turned out to be some of the best on our trip so far.

Raj had enrolled various members of family and staff to show us around the neighbouring territory, including the village his great grandfather and subsequent generations were brought up in.  This is where the Beautiful Green Bangladesh comes in as the country is almost flat as a pancake but very lush and verdant.  We had trips down rivers, through rain forests, past local farms and observed tea plantations.  Everything was a different shade of green, and although a very poor country, everybody was very welcoming and seemed pleased to see us.

Perhaps the best day was going down the rivers near the Indian border.  There we saw the extent of how hard the people work as they salvage rocks from the river bed and transport them downstream to be crushed into gravel, sometimes by hand.  On another part of the same river we saw the subsistence side of the rural life where people tend their livestock and grow rice and maize.

After the river trip we drove across northern Bangladesh to the Rutargul National Park.  Here we saw the mangrove swamps in all their glory, at dusk with the sun going down.  These are quite magical as the boats literally go in amongst the mangrove trees.

We spent our last day in Sylhet with Raj, going to his own family’s home town of Shonkopur.  This is as hard as it gets, with people having to row fifteen minutes each way across flooded fields to get clean water, and where people live solely off the land and their animals.

We learnt that Raj, like a lot of British Bangladeshi families, do great things by improving roads, bringing in electricity, sinking new wells for drinking water, funding education and actually building an orphanage.  If anybody wants to know how people can survive on next to nothing, but still be happy, then visit rural Bangladesh – it will certainly make you think about your own life!

Back in Sylhet we also saw the delights of city life with the local chicken and fish markets.  Here chickens and quails are sold live, as are the fish, and goats are being carved up for sale, beside the remaining tethered goats waiting for their turn.  I am not sure the RSPCA or EU have reached Bangladesh yet.

You can see that we have had a very different time in our fourth country.  India is just very busy with people pushing their way through life and everyone has to get out of their way, Nepal is calm and geared up for its tourists, and Bhutan is a peaceful Buddhist country.  Bangladesh will get there, but at the moment is very rural, green and has its own place in the world.  What a wonderful time, and thanks Raj for the opportunity.