In Dinajpur on the morning of the 13th, I walked to the train station to try once again to get a seat on the train to Dhaka. I had met a guy the evening before and again this morning who told me he could get me a seat. I was a little dubious, but eventually decided to give him 500 taka and see if he could get me a seat. I went back to my hotel, checked out, and returned to the station about 11. I waited and, eventually, not too long before the train's delayed departure, he came back with a ticket, face value 430 taka; so he charged me less than a dollar for his services.
The train left about 2 and I had a comfortable seat, the last seat in the last carriage at the end of the long train. The seat was all by itself and, most unfortunately, right next to the toilet. You don't want to be next to a toilet on Bangladeshi trains, but at least it was a seat. The slow train headed east for about 15 miles and then turned south. I'd been told the trains were traveling more slowly than usual because of fear of derailments caused by opponents of the government. The scenery was lovely, full of rice paddies, my seat was comfortable, and the toilet, at the start of the trip, not terribly odorous. Darkness descended about 6:30, just before the train stopped at Natore about 6:45. Even though I had a ticket all the way to Dhaka and wanted to go to Tangail (maybe 50 miles northwest of Dhaka), I thought about getting off in Natore, as I had stayed there six days earlier and knew it had a decent hotel. I figured I could get a bus or some sort of transport from there the next day to Tangail, across the Jamuna River. I always prefer traveling during the day to see the scenery.
I probably should have spent the night in Natore, but my 30 day visa was nearing its end, so I stayed on the train. It slowly continued south and then made a big loop to the northeast, heading towards the Jamuna River. The train had crowded up and the aisles were now packed. The toilet now reeked and smokers congregated near it. I thought about getting off at Serajganj, just before the river, but the train station seemed at the edge of or outside of town and I knew nothing about hotels there.
The train slowly crossed the Jamuna on a long bridge between 9:30 and 10, taking 16 minutes to do so. I could look down and see water and sandbanks. Finally, about 11:30, the train reached Tangail. I had trouble getting off. The aisles were packed and the first door I tried was stuck. I had to push my way through the crowd to get to another door. Being in the last carriage in a very long train, the carriage was quite a way from the station platforms, so I had to jump down with my backpack onto the rocky bed of the tracks and walk in the dark and cold to the station. A helpful fellow passenger helped me get a CNG to the hotel in town where I planned to stay. We had to wake the manager to let me in, and I was very glad to wash and go to bed.
I slept until almost 8 the next morning. After breakfast, I made my way via three different vehicles to Atia Mosque, only 5 or 6 miles east of Tangail and set in lovely countryside of rice paddies, palm trees, and much other vegetation. The small mosque was built in 1609 and most recently restored in 1830 and the early 1900's by zamindars. The terracotta panels on it, with mostly floral representations, were interesting, though not as interesting as the ones with human and animal figures on Hindu temples. Nearby is a ruined and abandoned small mosque next to a madrassa. I walked to the mosque and several of the madrassa students came out or stood at the doors and windows of the madrassa to look me over. Even some girls came out, from what seemed to be a sex segregated classroom. They were shy but friendly. Eventually, though, a bearded guy in a robe came out from an office and yelled at them to get back to their classrooms.
I decided to walk back to the main road and enjoyed the walk. The countryside was green and pretty, with rice growing everywhere. The road was mostly deserted except for a few friendly bicyclists and an occasional auto or bicycle rickshaw. I came across some shy, uniformed school girls walking home, perhaps for their lunch break, or maybe school is just in the morning. On the main road I got an auto rickshaw back to town, getting back about noon.
About an hour later I left Tangail on a bus bound for Mymensingh, about 55 miles northeast. The trip on a packed bus took almost three hours, passing, as usual, lot of rice growing, but also some sal forest. After checking into a hotel under now cloudy skies, I walked to the banks of the Brahmaputra River on the north edge of town. This apparently waterless, sandy riverbed was once the main course of the Brahmaputra, the mighty river that flows into Bangladesh from India to the north, but the river changed course some time ago. The now dry riverbed seems to have retained the name, if not much of the water, of India's Brahmaputra, while the now main course of the Brahmaputra, called the Jamuna in Bangladesh, flows further west. The riverside was fairly disgusting, with hovels, trash, and the smell of urine. I kept walking west and eventually came to a riverside circus, with elephants. This was February 14, Valentine's Day, and back in the city center I noticed restaurants decorated with hearts and people carrying flowers. In India Hindu nationalists often protest and even terrorize restaurants that have Valentine's Day events. In Mymensingh I noticed that the Hindu women I saw that evening seemed especially dressed up and made up.
The next day was cloudy all day. About 9:30 I took a bus about half an hour west to Muktagacha to see a 300 year old rajbari in ruins. I came back to Mymensingh and visited its 100 year old rajbari, mostly closed but occupied by offices. A European style statue of a naked woman stands in front of the rajbari. I've read the rajbari now houses offices of an organization that trains women teachers. I wandered around the grounds, with a few Bangladeshis also wandering around.
About 2 I left Mymensingh on a bus heading north to Birisiri, a village just before the start of the Garo Hills that mark the border with India. The trip was slow and dusty under cloudy skies, covering maybe 30 miles in more than three hours. Fortunately, I had a seat up front with good leg room in the very crowded bus. The bus first crossed the long bridge over the empty Brahmaputra and then continued north over terrible roads, making lots of stops. As usual, there was lots of rice to be seen on the way
Arriving after 5 in the dusty, ugly center of Birisiri, I walked along a narrow lane through greener, much more pleasant surroundings to get to the YWCA hostel in the woods outside the village and checked in to a nice room. Birisiri is a Garo village, though there are also Bengalis. Most Garos living in the Garo Hills to the north in India. They are hill people, about two million in total, less than ten per cent of them living in Bangladesh. Most are now Christians, the result of 19th century missionaries. The receptionist who checked me in was Garo. I walked back to the dusty center on the main road, where the only restaurants are, and not very good ones at that, for a chicken and rice dinner. An open market was strung out along the road, with fruit and vegetables, fish and chickens. Back at the YWCA I had to listen to nearby amplified yelling, wailing, and singing till late. I was later told it was some sort of Christian religious service. It was a Sunday night.
Early the next morning I walked east from the YWCA, heading away from the village center. The narrow road was raised high over the watery rice paddies it passed. The morning was sunny and there were few houses. I did see a church in a walled enclosure. I met both Garos and Bengalis, and some particularly friendly old Garo women. I saw ducks here and there and passed tea shops in shacks and a barber plying his trade on a couple of boys at the side of the road. I came back to the dusty village center for breakfast, with the benefit of the company of what appeared to be the village idiot, who latched onto me, the only foreigner around, speaking constantly some sort of incomprehensible gibberish.
About 10 I hired a guy with a bicycle rickshaw with a little electric motor to take me a few miles north to the border and the so-called China Clay Hills just before the border. A little north of the village we had to cross the Someswari River by ferry, reaching the ferry over deep sand in the riverbed. Dredges sitting on the sand at the waterside were dredging up sand and pouring it into big trucks. I was told 300 to 350 trucks full of sand leave every day for Dhaka. On the other side of the river a paved road headed north, though with several sandy patches, usually at streams. I saw men fishing by throwing nets. Many of the women were in black, both Bengali and Garo. There was very little traffic. Reaching the China Clay Hills, we stopped and walked among and onto the small mounds hardly rising above the flat plains. To the north, over the border, real hills, the forested Garo Hills, were visible. We came across about 50 people, men and women, Garos and Bengalis, working in the most basic conditions at some sort of mine d(a clay mine, I suppose) in the clay mounds. Men were using picks and shovels to break up the earth while women moved the dirt and rock with pans carried atop their heads. The soil was purplish in places. We watched for a while and then it must have been lunchtime as they all stopped work and headed to a nearby village.
We got back on the rickshaw and headed to a hill next to the river and just short of the border at a place called Ranikhong. A church sat atop the hill and a secondary school below it. From the hilltop were good views of the wide river below and upriver into the hills in India. I watched two boats and several men positioning fishing nets into some sort of fish corral in the river just below the hill. From Ranikhong we traveled just a bit further north to the border post and the banks of the very clear and cold river, and then headed back to Birisiri, arriving about 2.
Back at the YWCA I sat in the sun and talked to an interesting Garo guy. From about 4 to sunset I again walked east into the countryside. I watched a guy plowing a rice paddy and met all sorts of friendly people, men and women, kids and adults. One woman happily posed with her large family for a photo. I stopped at a tea shop for some tea. Everybody was friendly. For a while I walked back with a little girl named Papiya and she introduced me to everyone we came across, saying, "This is Doug." Eventually, we reached her house and I continued on my own. The sun set over the rice paddies through palm trees.
The next morning, again sunny, I again spent maybe a couple of hours walking to the east of the village. Fewer folks were out and about compared to the previous afternoon. I watched an energetic woman using a big scoop to move water from one paddy to another. I walked on some paddy banks and went up to two houses with traditional Garo entrance arches to the yard in front of the house, made, if I remember correctly, of wood and palm fronds. One family, a mother and father and some kids, invited me in and explained it had been constructed for a wedding. The father told me he was a fan of Billy Graham, so I guess they are Baptists.
I left Birisiri shortly before noon on a CNG headed to Mymensingh. I had hoped to get transport to Srimangal or Sylhet in Bangladesh's northeast corner, but was told there was only an overnight bus that traveled bad roads. The CNG was much faster (and dustier) than the bus I had taken from Mymensingh and arrived at the Brahmaputra bridge just north of Mymensingh in less than two hours. However, there was a massive traffic jam leading up to and on the bridge. We inched along. Eventually, I followed the lead of other passengers and got off and walked over the long bridge. On the other side was a chaotic jumble of buses and other transport. I asked about buses to Dhaka and was told to go to another bus stand, catering to a single bus company. First, I headed to the train station to see about trains, but was told there were no tickets available.
I took a bicycle rickshaw to the bus stand and was able to get a seat on a comfortable bus that left for Dhaka shortly after 3. The 75 mile trip south to Dhaka was dusty, with much roadwork along the route, through unattractive scenery. I saw a lot of aggressive driving. In the towns just north of Dhaka, especially Gazipur, we passed garment factory after garment factory, some looking somewhat modern and some looking drab and unsafe. It was dark by the time we reached Dhaka. Passing through very slow traffic we went through the modern center north of the old center, full of bight lights. The bus ended its journey about 7 and after some trouble I found a rickshaw to take me to the hotel where I had stayed before. It took 40 minutes through heavy traffic. I was happy to get there, have a good chicken dinner, and then wash my filthy shirt, trousers, windbreaker and day pack before bedtime.
I spent the next day, a warm, sunny day, in Dhaka. This was the last day of the 30 days allowed by my visa, and I had earlier planned to head east and cross the border to Agartala in India. There is a Bangladesh consulate in Agartala and I planned to get a new visa there. However, I had heard or read that the consulate is sometimes difficult about issuing visas, and I thought it might be particularly difficult with the political disturbances and bus bombings. There were still several places I wanted to go to in Bangladesh, so I decided to take the risk of overstaying my visa.
I didn't do much that day. I spent the morning deciding to overstay my visa and most of the afternoon relaxing in the hotel lobby. A Bangladesh-Afghanistan cricket match was on television. I did take a late afternoon walk to the nearby huge, cavernous, and not particularly appealing mosque built in 1961. I spent some time just watching the chaotic street traffic, with cars, buses, rickshaws and other vehicles all jumbled together. Late at night there was thunder and a heavy rain.
The train left about 2 and I had a comfortable seat, the last seat in the last carriage at the end of the long train. The seat was all by itself and, most unfortunately, right next to the toilet. You don't want to be next to a toilet on Bangladeshi trains, but at least it was a seat. The slow train headed east for about 15 miles and then turned south. I'd been told the trains were traveling more slowly than usual because of fear of derailments caused by opponents of the government. The scenery was lovely, full of rice paddies, my seat was comfortable, and the toilet, at the start of the trip, not terribly odorous. Darkness descended about 6:30, just before the train stopped at Natore about 6:45. Even though I had a ticket all the way to Dhaka and wanted to go to Tangail (maybe 50 miles northwest of Dhaka), I thought about getting off in Natore, as I had stayed there six days earlier and knew it had a decent hotel. I figured I could get a bus or some sort of transport from there the next day to Tangail, across the Jamuna River. I always prefer traveling during the day to see the scenery.
I probably should have spent the night in Natore, but my 30 day visa was nearing its end, so I stayed on the train. It slowly continued south and then made a big loop to the northeast, heading towards the Jamuna River. The train had crowded up and the aisles were now packed. The toilet now reeked and smokers congregated near it. I thought about getting off at Serajganj, just before the river, but the train station seemed at the edge of or outside of town and I knew nothing about hotels there.
The train slowly crossed the Jamuna on a long bridge between 9:30 and 10, taking 16 minutes to do so. I could look down and see water and sandbanks. Finally, about 11:30, the train reached Tangail. I had trouble getting off. The aisles were packed and the first door I tried was stuck. I had to push my way through the crowd to get to another door. Being in the last carriage in a very long train, the carriage was quite a way from the station platforms, so I had to jump down with my backpack onto the rocky bed of the tracks and walk in the dark and cold to the station. A helpful fellow passenger helped me get a CNG to the hotel in town where I planned to stay. We had to wake the manager to let me in, and I was very glad to wash and go to bed.
I slept until almost 8 the next morning. After breakfast, I made my way via three different vehicles to Atia Mosque, only 5 or 6 miles east of Tangail and set in lovely countryside of rice paddies, palm trees, and much other vegetation. The small mosque was built in 1609 and most recently restored in 1830 and the early 1900's by zamindars. The terracotta panels on it, with mostly floral representations, were interesting, though not as interesting as the ones with human and animal figures on Hindu temples. Nearby is a ruined and abandoned small mosque next to a madrassa. I walked to the mosque and several of the madrassa students came out or stood at the doors and windows of the madrassa to look me over. Even some girls came out, from what seemed to be a sex segregated classroom. They were shy but friendly. Eventually, though, a bearded guy in a robe came out from an office and yelled at them to get back to their classrooms.
I decided to walk back to the main road and enjoyed the walk. The countryside was green and pretty, with rice growing everywhere. The road was mostly deserted except for a few friendly bicyclists and an occasional auto or bicycle rickshaw. I came across some shy, uniformed school girls walking home, perhaps for their lunch break, or maybe school is just in the morning. On the main road I got an auto rickshaw back to town, getting back about noon.
About an hour later I left Tangail on a bus bound for Mymensingh, about 55 miles northeast. The trip on a packed bus took almost three hours, passing, as usual, lot of rice growing, but also some sal forest. After checking into a hotel under now cloudy skies, I walked to the banks of the Brahmaputra River on the north edge of town. This apparently waterless, sandy riverbed was once the main course of the Brahmaputra, the mighty river that flows into Bangladesh from India to the north, but the river changed course some time ago. The now dry riverbed seems to have retained the name, if not much of the water, of India's Brahmaputra, while the now main course of the Brahmaputra, called the Jamuna in Bangladesh, flows further west. The riverside was fairly disgusting, with hovels, trash, and the smell of urine. I kept walking west and eventually came to a riverside circus, with elephants. This was February 14, Valentine's Day, and back in the city center I noticed restaurants decorated with hearts and people carrying flowers. In India Hindu nationalists often protest and even terrorize restaurants that have Valentine's Day events. In Mymensingh I noticed that the Hindu women I saw that evening seemed especially dressed up and made up.
The next day was cloudy all day. About 9:30 I took a bus about half an hour west to Muktagacha to see a 300 year old rajbari in ruins. I came back to Mymensingh and visited its 100 year old rajbari, mostly closed but occupied by offices. A European style statue of a naked woman stands in front of the rajbari. I've read the rajbari now houses offices of an organization that trains women teachers. I wandered around the grounds, with a few Bangladeshis also wandering around.
About 2 I left Mymensingh on a bus heading north to Birisiri, a village just before the start of the Garo Hills that mark the border with India. The trip was slow and dusty under cloudy skies, covering maybe 30 miles in more than three hours. Fortunately, I had a seat up front with good leg room in the very crowded bus. The bus first crossed the long bridge over the empty Brahmaputra and then continued north over terrible roads, making lots of stops. As usual, there was lots of rice to be seen on the way
Arriving after 5 in the dusty, ugly center of Birisiri, I walked along a narrow lane through greener, much more pleasant surroundings to get to the YWCA hostel in the woods outside the village and checked in to a nice room. Birisiri is a Garo village, though there are also Bengalis. Most Garos living in the Garo Hills to the north in India. They are hill people, about two million in total, less than ten per cent of them living in Bangladesh. Most are now Christians, the result of 19th century missionaries. The receptionist who checked me in was Garo. I walked back to the dusty center on the main road, where the only restaurants are, and not very good ones at that, for a chicken and rice dinner. An open market was strung out along the road, with fruit and vegetables, fish and chickens. Back at the YWCA I had to listen to nearby amplified yelling, wailing, and singing till late. I was later told it was some sort of Christian religious service. It was a Sunday night.
Early the next morning I walked east from the YWCA, heading away from the village center. The narrow road was raised high over the watery rice paddies it passed. The morning was sunny and there were few houses. I did see a church in a walled enclosure. I met both Garos and Bengalis, and some particularly friendly old Garo women. I saw ducks here and there and passed tea shops in shacks and a barber plying his trade on a couple of boys at the side of the road. I came back to the dusty village center for breakfast, with the benefit of the company of what appeared to be the village idiot, who latched onto me, the only foreigner around, speaking constantly some sort of incomprehensible gibberish.
About 10 I hired a guy with a bicycle rickshaw with a little electric motor to take me a few miles north to the border and the so-called China Clay Hills just before the border. A little north of the village we had to cross the Someswari River by ferry, reaching the ferry over deep sand in the riverbed. Dredges sitting on the sand at the waterside were dredging up sand and pouring it into big trucks. I was told 300 to 350 trucks full of sand leave every day for Dhaka. On the other side of the river a paved road headed north, though with several sandy patches, usually at streams. I saw men fishing by throwing nets. Many of the women were in black, both Bengali and Garo. There was very little traffic. Reaching the China Clay Hills, we stopped and walked among and onto the small mounds hardly rising above the flat plains. To the north, over the border, real hills, the forested Garo Hills, were visible. We came across about 50 people, men and women, Garos and Bengalis, working in the most basic conditions at some sort of mine d(a clay mine, I suppose) in the clay mounds. Men were using picks and shovels to break up the earth while women moved the dirt and rock with pans carried atop their heads. The soil was purplish in places. We watched for a while and then it must have been lunchtime as they all stopped work and headed to a nearby village.
We got back on the rickshaw and headed to a hill next to the river and just short of the border at a place called Ranikhong. A church sat atop the hill and a secondary school below it. From the hilltop were good views of the wide river below and upriver into the hills in India. I watched two boats and several men positioning fishing nets into some sort of fish corral in the river just below the hill. From Ranikhong we traveled just a bit further north to the border post and the banks of the very clear and cold river, and then headed back to Birisiri, arriving about 2.
Back at the YWCA I sat in the sun and talked to an interesting Garo guy. From about 4 to sunset I again walked east into the countryside. I watched a guy plowing a rice paddy and met all sorts of friendly people, men and women, kids and adults. One woman happily posed with her large family for a photo. I stopped at a tea shop for some tea. Everybody was friendly. For a while I walked back with a little girl named Papiya and she introduced me to everyone we came across, saying, "This is Doug." Eventually, we reached her house and I continued on my own. The sun set over the rice paddies through palm trees.
The next morning, again sunny, I again spent maybe a couple of hours walking to the east of the village. Fewer folks were out and about compared to the previous afternoon. I watched an energetic woman using a big scoop to move water from one paddy to another. I walked on some paddy banks and went up to two houses with traditional Garo entrance arches to the yard in front of the house, made, if I remember correctly, of wood and palm fronds. One family, a mother and father and some kids, invited me in and explained it had been constructed for a wedding. The father told me he was a fan of Billy Graham, so I guess they are Baptists.
I left Birisiri shortly before noon on a CNG headed to Mymensingh. I had hoped to get transport to Srimangal or Sylhet in Bangladesh's northeast corner, but was told there was only an overnight bus that traveled bad roads. The CNG was much faster (and dustier) than the bus I had taken from Mymensingh and arrived at the Brahmaputra bridge just north of Mymensingh in less than two hours. However, there was a massive traffic jam leading up to and on the bridge. We inched along. Eventually, I followed the lead of other passengers and got off and walked over the long bridge. On the other side was a chaotic jumble of buses and other transport. I asked about buses to Dhaka and was told to go to another bus stand, catering to a single bus company. First, I headed to the train station to see about trains, but was told there were no tickets available.
I took a bicycle rickshaw to the bus stand and was able to get a seat on a comfortable bus that left for Dhaka shortly after 3. The 75 mile trip south to Dhaka was dusty, with much roadwork along the route, through unattractive scenery. I saw a lot of aggressive driving. In the towns just north of Dhaka, especially Gazipur, we passed garment factory after garment factory, some looking somewhat modern and some looking drab and unsafe. It was dark by the time we reached Dhaka. Passing through very slow traffic we went through the modern center north of the old center, full of bight lights. The bus ended its journey about 7 and after some trouble I found a rickshaw to take me to the hotel where I had stayed before. It took 40 minutes through heavy traffic. I was happy to get there, have a good chicken dinner, and then wash my filthy shirt, trousers, windbreaker and day pack before bedtime.
I spent the next day, a warm, sunny day, in Dhaka. This was the last day of the 30 days allowed by my visa, and I had earlier planned to head east and cross the border to Agartala in India. There is a Bangladesh consulate in Agartala and I planned to get a new visa there. However, I had heard or read that the consulate is sometimes difficult about issuing visas, and I thought it might be particularly difficult with the political disturbances and bus bombings. There were still several places I wanted to go to in Bangladesh, so I decided to take the risk of overstaying my visa.
I didn't do much that day. I spent the morning deciding to overstay my visa and most of the afternoon relaxing in the hotel lobby. A Bangladesh-Afghanistan cricket match was on television. I did take a late afternoon walk to the nearby huge, cavernous, and not particularly appealing mosque built in 1961. I spent some time just watching the chaotic street traffic, with cars, buses, rickshaws and other vehicles all jumbled together. Late at night there was thunder and a heavy rain.
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