February 25-28, 2015: Srimangal

Before 8 on the morning of the 25th I walked to the Chittagong train station, in time for my train's 8:15 departure.  However, I soon learned that the train was delayed until 10.  The train actually arrived sometime between 10:30 and 11, and left at 11:30.  I had a comfortable seat and enjoyed the trip north, though it was dusty and slow, with lots of stops.  We passed steel mills and jute factories north of Chittagong.  A train passed us loaded with containers on flat cars.  The guy sitting next to me worked for the border patrol and he was interesting to talk to.  He bought me lunch.  For a long stretch we passed very close to the Indian border.  I spotted a border post on a hill less than a mile away.  There is lots of Bangladeshi immigration into India, which the Indians do not appreciate. 

Darkness fell about 6:30, soon after we had passed the town of Aktama.  The train reached Srimangal shortly after 8:30 and I got off there.  I figured it wouldn't get to Sylhet until about 11:30.  Tired, I found a hotel, had dinner, and went to bed after 11.

After a slow morning I rented a rickety old bike for the day for 300 taka, less than $4.  I biked to the train station, crossed the tracks, and headed south and then east through a tea estate.  The sky was cloudy, but the day was warm, warm enough for me to convert my trousers into shorts.  Bangladesh is the world's tenth largest producer of tea, with  the estates in the northeast of the country.  Most of the workers are descendants of workers brought in by the British from Bihar, Odisha (formerly known as Orissa), and West Bengal. 

I biked through the severely pruned tea bushes of the Finlay Tea Estate.  I didn't see any tea plucking, but I did see Hindu shrines here and there and a long line of women with long bamboo poles.  I was a little too early for tea plucking.  The season runs from March to December.  Women were pruning tea bushes with sickles, overseen by a male supervisor.  A small guy carrying two big metal water containers on a yoke over his shoulders came along the road and up to the women pruning.  One by one they came over for a drink of water out of a metal cup, and then he continued on his way.  The workers were friendly, posing for photos.  The area is flat (about 250 feet above sea level) and not particularly scenic, especially under cloudy skies.   

I continued east through the village of Radhanagar to the Zareen Tea Estate, more scenic with much of the tea growing on little hills.  I stopped at the office to ask permission to bike through the estate and was ushered in to see the manager.  He had stacks of cash on his desk.  Perhaps it was payday.  From the office I biked past a tea factory and then biked and walked through the tea covered hills of the estate.  It was afternoon now, with the sun coming out at times.  I didn't see a lot of workers.  One woman I did see was carrying a big bundle of grass on her head.  She stopped and showed me her sickle.  As I was leaving the estate I saw several pink-clad school girls, probably daughters of tea workers.  A little later I came across some Muslim school girls, clad in white.  A couple of them posed for a photo and then were embarrassed about it. 

I found a little place for lunch about 2 or 2:30 and then biked further east to the village of Doluchara, a village of Tripura people.  The Tripura are Hindus and speak their own language.  There are several non-Bengali villages in the area.  As soon as I parked my bike to walk through the village I met a short, pretty young woman, maybe 20 years old, who introduced herself and told me her name was Momota.  She spoke very good English and told me was a NGO worker (partly funded by USAID) heading to a meeting in the village.  She was early and suggested we stop for tea, and then insisted on paying for it.  She told me her family came from Odisha, in India, but several generations ago, and that she speaks Odiya (the language of Odisha), Bengali, and Hindi.  She is studying accounting and needs two more years for her degree.

She invited me to her meeting, on environmental matters, in a mud-walled building.  About 15 or 20 Tripura women attended.  Most were young, though a few were middle aged and at least one older.  One carried an infant while another had a young child with her.  They were all very friendly.   We all sat in wooden chairs, me next to Momota and the others in a semi-circle around us.  Some of the women were sharing the narrow chairs.  Momota handled the half hour meeting superbly.  She is a very take charge young woman.  She introduced me and as the meeting continued explained to me what was going on.  They discussed the need to open a bank account and the need to elect a president, among other matters.  It was a very well run meeting.

The meeting over, Momota left and I walked through the village and into a lemon tree grove just beyond.  The green lemons on the trees were not oval, but long.  Some of the lemon trees had little white flowers.  I crumpled some of the leaves to get a lemon smell.  Nearby pineapples were growing in rows on little hills.  I saw some more mud walled houses, with wooden doors and shutters.  It was a very pretty area.  I crossed a bamboo bridge over a dry watercourse and later followed the dry watercourse under the bamboo bridge.  I came to a house with piles of green lemons in front of it.  I wandered around the area and then the friendly village until about 5:30 and then biked back to town.

Just outside of town I stopped at a simple war memorial with a signpost saying "Slaughterhouse 1971."  (There must be Kurt Vonnegut fans in Bangladesh.)  The plaque on it read, "In Memoirs To Our Slaughtered Heroes in 1971."   

In town, after dark, I came across a Hindu procession, all women except for a man with a small movie camera filming the procession and a band of musicians with red shirts with big white hearts on the back.  I followed them as they went to several small temples, ululating at some of them.  They were all very friendly, and happily posed for photos.  The band was composed of two drummers, at least one guy with metal maracas, and a very good coronet player.

The next morning after breakfast I met Mark and Kirsty, whom I had met and traveled with in Ladakh, in India, in 2010 and a Portuguese guy named Fernando.  They had arrived by train late the night before.  The four of us hired a CNG to take us northeast and then south, maybe 20 miles in total, to Madhapur Lake, in a tea estate.  A big group of picnickers were there.  The lake wasn't much to see, but we walked through the tea estate on dirt paths and through some villages, first north and then west, heading back toward Srimangal.  The day was sunnier than the day before, but the sky was hazy.  We passed women carrying bundles of firewood on their heads and other carrying bundles of grass on their heads, and again there were women pruning the tea bushes.  After maybe a ten mile trek we reached Doluchara village about 4.  We walked a bit further to a restaurant where we could get something to drink and then caught a CNG back to town about 5.  That night a Muslim ranted on a loudspeaker, making himself annoying till after midnight. 

The next morning the four of us had breakfast and then Mark, Kirsty, and I walked to the train station and then beyond to Ramnagar village, a village of Monipuri people, mostly Hindu.  We walked all around the friendly village for maybe two hours, taking lots of photographs.  Both kids and adults were happy to be photographed, the little boys sometimes aggressive about it.  A tall, thin old man with a beard  was particularly friendly, as were several middle aged women, and the little girls were particularly nice.  One little girl had short curly hair sprinkled with little bits of flowers. 

The day was hot and humid and about 2 we walked to a tea shop beyond the village famous for its seven layer tea.  We each ordered a glass and there were indeed seven distinct layers of different colored tea.  Each layer is supposed to have a distinct flavor, but my palette isn't sophisticated enough to discern the differences.  We spent the rest of the afternoon there, meeting some other tourists who showed up, including a British Bangladeshi couple and two Australians originally from Italy.  We walked back to town at dusk, reaching a huge open air market near the train station, with fruit, vegetables, fish, and much more. 

February 19-24, 2015: Comilla, Chittagong, and Cox's Bazaar

Dhaka had some rain and thunder early on the morning of the 19th.  I took a cycle rickshaw to Sadarghat on the river, arriving about 10:30.  I just missed a launch leaving for Chandpur, down the river.  I left on the next one, at noon, under a cloudy sky, and stood on the bow as it headed downriver.  We passed hundreds of other boats on the river, welders working on boats on the riverbanks, and seemingly hundreds of brick kilns with tall smokestacks.  The big launch was packed and I, as the only foreigner on board, was incessantly pestered by questions, requests for photos, and open-mouthed stares.  After a while, I got pretty tired of it.  Maybe, after a month, I had finally reached my saturation point. 

The launch reached Chandpur about 3:30.  I had hoped to find a bus heading southeast to Chittagong, but there wasn't one among the buses waiting for the launch.  Chittagong is about 120 miles from Chandpur, so even if there had been a bus it probably wouldn't have arrived there until late.  Instead, I decided to head to Comilla, only about 45 miles from Chandpur.  I hopped on a small bus headed east to Hajiganj, and then another one northeast to Comilla.  A friendly fellow passenger insisted on paying for my ticket on the first leg. The bus rides were slow, with many stops, and I arrived in Comilla at 6:30, after dark.  I took an auto rickshaw to what turned out to be a very noisy hotel, from street traffic.  I ate a good chicken and naan dinner at a restaurant that specializes in that.

The next morning, after a chicken breakfast, I took a CNG to Mainimati, a half hour ride southwest of town.  Mainimati was a famous Buddhist center between the 6th and 13th centuries.  I headed to the restored ruins of the Salban Vihara monastery.  There wasn't much to see, mostly restored brick foundations of 115 cells surrounding the stubby remains of a temple.  There was, however, a very good museum and the day was pleasantly warm.  I spent about an hour and a half there before coming back to Comilla for lunch (chicken, of course).

I left for Chittagong, about 90 miles southeast, on a big bus with plenty of leg room about 12:30.  At first the bus traveled right along the Indian border.  The bus made a half hour stop for passengers to pray at a mosque on the way, the first time I can remember that happening.  We passed some rice, but not a lot.  I didn't see much water, either.  The countryside seemed considerably drier than what I had seen in the rest of the country.  I did see some crazy driving.  Eventually, a line of hills appeared to the east.  I hadn't seen many hills in Bangladesh previously.  Approaching Chittagong, I spotted lots of places selling marine supplies.  Ship breaking yards line the coast north of Chittagong, and I imagine these shops sell items taken from the ships.  After more than four hours, the bus reached Chittagong, and I took an electric rickshaw to a hotel (more expensive than usual, 1000 taka, about $13) in the center.  Chittagong is Bangladesh's second largest city, with 2.5 million people.  It is congested and polluted, but it does have hills, beautiful rain trees, and some attractive colonial era buildings.

The next morning about 10 I hired a CNG to take me to Kumiraghat on the coast northwest of Chittagong to see the ship breaking yards.  Getting there took about an hour, passing lots of marine supplies shops on the way.  Because the difference between high and low tide is so great along this part of the coast, huge ocean-going vessels which have reached obsolescence are beached here to be broken up.  It is hard and dangerous work, done with few protections for the workers.  Publicity has been bad, and the yards now restrict visitors.

Upon arrival, I walked on a dirt road paralleling the shore and passing the high fences and gates of several ship breaking yards.  Signs said "No Photos" and maintained that only adult workers were employed.  I could see the huge ships behind offices and piles of debris in the yards.  Cranes and bulldozers were also visible in the yards.  I walked back and then walked out on a more than half mile long jetty.  A huge collection of orange lifeboats lay on the mud at the foot of the jetty.  From the jetty itself I could see big ships in both directions, resting on the mud.  Some were only partially intact, and I could see what looked like tiny little workers on the closest ones.  The evening before I had checked the time of low tide (9:25 a.m.) and high tide (2:45 p.m.)  Gulls rested on the mud as the tide began to come in.  Small ferryboats crowded with passengers came and went, heading to and from Sandwip Island, a large island about ten miles across the Sandwip Channel. 

The day was warm and from about 12:30 to 2 I sat in the shade of the shops at the foot of the jetty. I had something to eat and watched the activity.  A truck made a big potato delivery, sacks and sacks of potatoes.  A man was selling big papayas.  Passengers to and from Sandwip came and went.  About 2 I walked out again to the end of the jetty.  The tide was in.  The mudflats were now underwater.  I hired a boat to take me along the big ships to the north, and that was interesting.  I could see right into the interior of at least one of them.  One was only about half intact.  The whole front half of the ship appeared to have been dismantled. 

I returned to Chittagong about 4 and walked to the dirty shore of the Karnapuli River, maybe a half mile wide.  The river was full of boats, with a new bridge upriver.  I walked along the river, watching all the activity and in particular the small ferries full of people being taken across the river.  The sun set down the river.

The next morning I took a CNG to the World War II cemetery in town, with about 750 graves.  About half are British and more than 200 are Indian, almost all Muslim.  There are also graves of Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Africans, and one Dutchman.  There are also 19 Japanese, which must have been POWs.  There was a wartime hospital in Chittagong.  I wandered around the white headstones and well-tended green lawn, with flowers.  Three caretakers were at work.  One had to unlock the gate to let me in and out. 

From the cemetery I headed to the Zia Memorial Museum in a colonial era mock Tudor mansion, formerly the Circuit House, where visiting government officials would stay.  This is where President Zia was assassinated in 1981.    The bedroom where he was shot is kept as it was in March 1981 and a sign directs you to a wall with his blood on it.  Another room has a replica of his 1971 broadcast from Chittagong announcing the nation's independence and calling on the people to resist the Pakistanis.  A mannequin at the microphone is dressed like Zia.  The museum also has photographs, personal items like his sunglasses, and even menus and a certificate of fitness by his chief surgeon.  There is a statue of him outside.

From Chittagong I had wanted to go to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, full of interesting hill tribe people, in the hills to the east along the border with India.  There are something like 10 different ethnicities, mostly Buddhist and Christian.  However, the government just a few weeks earlier had closed the Hill Tracts to foreign tourists.  There has long been anti-government activity in these hills, since newly independent Bangladesh started sending Bengali settlers into the hills. The local people resisted, the government responded harshly, and tensions have waxed and waned over the years.  About half the population of the Hill Tracts is now Bengali.  The government says it is restricting foreigners' access to protect foreigners, but it probably is more concerned about foreigners seeing how the hill tribe people are mistreated.

Unable to visit the Hill Tracts, I left Chittagong about 12:30 on a bus heading south to Cox's Bazaar, a trip of almost 90 miles.  The bus crossed over the wide Karnapuhli River on the new bridge and heading south passed through small towns and villages, forests, and some rice paddies, but without much water.  Sometime after 3 the bus stopped in the town of Chakalia for more than half an hour.  I don't know what was going on, but eventually we were told the bus would not continue onto Cox's Bazaar, and we had to take a smaller, much more crowded and unpleasant bus.  It finally arrived in Cox's Bazaar after 5. 

Cox's Bazaar is situated on the world's longest continuous natural beach, a wide beach 75 miles long.  It is a resort town, with big hotels, some quite fancy.  (It is named after Captain Hiram Cox, a British East India Company representative.)  There are few budget hotels.  However, with Bangladesh's transport problems there are few tourists, and I was able to get a room for 1100 taka (about $14), after a 40% discount.  After checking in, I walked to the beach, a ten minute walk away, about 6, passing through a grove of thin casuarina pines growing in sandy soil just before the beach.  The sun had already set.   I spent about 15 minutes on the wide beach and then walked back.  

I was up and on the beach at about 7 the next morning and spent about two and a half hours walking on it, first to the north and then back.  Fishing boats were out on the sea and on the beach.  Fishermen were using nets to catch fish, pulling the nets not onto the beach, but into their fishing boats just offshore.  People, all Bangladeshis as far as I could tell, were also strolling the beach, but not many.  One was collecting sea shells.  All sorts of small crabs were on the beach, rolling little balls of sand around their holes.  They were especially prolific near shallow pools of standing water in depressions on the wide beach, the water left behind by the receding tide.  The tide was coming in and the day heating up as I headed back to my hotel for breakfast.  The hotel had a good breakfast -- fried eggs, toast and butter, coffee, and "caned" juice, as the menu said -- all included in the room price.  On television during breakfast the news focused on the Oscars.

After my late breakfast I walked to a Burmese style teak temple, built in 1898, in town and then walked to a jetty on the river, or maybe a bay, on the north side of town where speedboats leave for Maheshkali Island, a large island a few miles north. To get to the speedboats you have to walk on a long wooden walkway with many broken and missing planks.  In fact, there were several such walkways with small boats alongside them. Further out on the water were perhaps a hundred wooden fishing boats, looking like miniature pirate ships with small, but high "poop" decks at the stern.  Some of these boats were flying flags, much longer vertically than horizontally, two flags and flagpoles to a boat.  One set of flags was yellow with black dots.  Others had stripes or symbols. 

About 1 I left on a small, crowded speedboat for Maheshkali, about a 15 minute trip.  We sped up a mangrove lined channel, left it and had a glimpse of the open sea to the west before coming along the mangrove covered shore of the island.  A friendly Hindu young man was on the boat with me and said he was going to the island to visit a relative's home.  The speedboat docked at another long causeway, this one concrete, on the southeast end of the long island, maybe 15 or more miles from north to south. 

From the little town at the end of the long causeway I hired a cycle rickshaw to take me to the Adinath Temple a few miles away halfway up a hill to the north, on the eastern shore of the island.  The streets of the little town were congested with all sorts of vehicles, as was the road leading to the temple.  It turned out there was a big Hindu mela, or festival, at the temple, with thousands of people.  I walked up the stairs to the  temple on the hill, mobbed with people.  The views from the temple were good, of the mangroves and water below, to the east, with fishing boats on the water and another long jetty. 

It was the activity at the temple, however, that was the most interesting.  I spent about three hours there.  Men and women were carrying little babies all dressed up and wearing hats.  This was a first rice ceremony, when a child is first fed rice.  Red robed priests presided and everybody was very friendly.  I was the only foreigner there.  People happily posed for photographs; in fact, they brought babies to me to be photographed.  Everybody seemed to be in a great mood.  I walked all over and sat here and there, watching the individual rice feeding ceremonies.  There were parades and blowing of horns and beating of drums. 

Eventually, the temple mostly cleared out and many of the people gathered just below the temple for a meal.  They sat in rows on the ground as others dished out food from pails onto plates.  Everybody ate with their hands.  I watched from above and folks would spot me and point or wave or smile. About 4 I walked to the top of the hill, higher than the temple.  There is a golden stupa on the way to the top.  I would guess the hill reaches maybe a hundred feet above sea level. 

About 4:30 I took a cycle rickshaw back to the jetty, about a half hour trip.  I passed boat building, salt works, and rice growing.  The town streets were much less congested than at my first arrival.  The speedboat sped back to Cox's Bazaar, passing several of those pirate ship lookalikes on the way and arriving at a different jetty.   The tide was very low, with mudflats everywhere.  From the speedboat we had to climb into and out of a sequence of other speedboats to get to the wooden jetty, which was a little difficult.  I made a dash to the beach and got there just in time to see the sun disappear into haze about 15 minutes before the scheduled time for sunset.  A few fishing boats were still out to sea.  I watched them from the casuarina trees and then walked on the beach until dark.  A crescent moon appeared.

The next morning I was on the beach again about 7 and spent another two and a half hours there.  This time I walked south, passing large beachside hotels, many under construction.  Again, there were few Bangladeshis on the beach.  Along one stretch of the beach were red colored lounges and umbrellas.  A hotel sign advertised "Burger Fest" with pictures of hamburgers.  Horses and jet skis were available for rent on the beach.  I watched fishing boats out on the sea and again saw fishermen pulling in fishing nets.  I spotted a red crab on the beach.  Coming back to near my hotel, I sat for a while under the casuarina trees before going back for breakfast.

The hotel manager joined me for breakfast. I'm not sure there were any other guests in the hotel.  He was an interesting guy.  He had worked at sea for 31 years, as a boatswain.  He told me he had been to 123 countries, and to New York, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans and San Francisco in the United States.  He said he had worked on oil tankers, with crews of 50, container ships, and even a cruise ship that traveled from Southampton to New York and the Caribbean. 

From Cox's Bazaar I had wanted to travel further south, to St. Martin's Island, off Bangladesh's furthest southeastern mainland point and closer to the Burmese mainland than to the Bangladeshi.  However, I was told that because there were so few tourists the ferry wasn't running.  So I had to give that up.  At 12 left on a bus headed back to Chittagong.  The bus was slow, with lots of stops, and reached Chittagong about 4:30.  After checking into a hotel I walked over to the train station and bought a first class ticket for 460 taka (about $6) for the next morning's train to Sylhet, way up in the northeast corner of Bangladesh. 

February 13-18, 2015: Tangail, Mymensingh, Birisiri, and Dhaka

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.

February 8-12, 2015: Bogra, Rangpur, and Dinajpur

On the morning of the 8th I was bound for Bogra, 40 miles northeast of Natore, but I couldn't find a bus due to the continuing political disturbances and bus bombings.  I was able to get a ride in the back of a covered pickup to Singra, perhaps a third of the way to Bogra, and then a van from there to Bogra, arriving about 11:30.  The morning was sunny and we passed lots of rice paddies.  Tambir, a young guy on the van who worked for a cell phone company, guided me to a hotel better and cheaper than the one I was planning to try, showed me a good place for lunch, and then went off to work. 

After lunch I took a CNG about 8 miles north to Mahasthan, site of the ruins of a fort dating back to the 3rd century B.C., though abandoned perhaps 500 years ago.  Not much remains, but it is a peaceful rural area.  The former walls are now mostly hillocks, with some brickwork showing.  I walked along the top of the eastern wall of the rectangular citadel, something like a mile by 3/4 of a mile.  Rice and other crops were planted along the walls, with people pulling out densely growing clumps of new grown rice to plant them more spaced out nearby.  I made my way to the northwest section of the walls, the highest part, but still more hillock than wall.  I came across a friendly but seemingly somewhat wary shepherd and his flock.

I came back to Bogra about 5 and watched a very crowded train slowly leave the train station.  Many of the trains are packed due to the paucity of buses.  All sorts of vendors had their merchandise spread out along the tracks, a sort of open market.  I met Tambir for dinner and also met again Olivier, a Belgian who had been on the Sundarbans trip.

The three of us had breakfast again the next morning and then Olivier and I, with Tambir's help, hired a CNG for 1400 taka (about $18) to take us to the ruins of the 8th century Buddhist monastery of Somapuri Vihara at Paharpur, said to have been at one time the largest monastery south of the Himalayas.  From Bogra we headed north and then northwest to Jaipurhat, and then southwest to Paharpur on bad roads past lots and lots of growing rice and through a few villages.  At one we made a tea stop in a village and asked directions.  The two hour trip to get there was pleasant and interesting, but the site itself was somewhat disappointing.  At the center of a large quadrangle (which once had 177 cells for monks) sits a 65 foot tall brick stupa, which you can climb on.  A large team of restorers was working on it, and there are some interesting terracotta panels of people and animals embedded in it, though it seemed many were replicas.  We walked around the stupa and then along the periphery of former monk cells.  Only the foundations are left. The workers were friendly and I took photos of a bunch of them.  The museum was excellent, with black basalt Hindu sculptures and a beautiful large bronze Buddha from the 8th century.  We spent about two and a half hours at Paharpur before making the scenic trip back to Bogra.

Back in town I walked to the Mohammed Ali Palace, a rajbari (that is, a large mansion) that is furnished and has mannequins dressed both in Bengali and British fashion.  It is the former home of nawabs.  Among the rooms is a large dining room (filled with mannequins), a billiard room, a bedroom, and a music room (more mannequins).  Photographs of Kennedy, Nehru, Queen Elizabeth II, and others are on the walls, along with modern paintings and drawings of Laocoon, Apollo and Daphne, and other classical subjects.  Outside is a sort of low budget amusement park with rickety rides.  I had dinner again with Olivier and Tambir, and Tambir gave us each a big coffee cup emblazoned with the name of his company and a box of leather goods, including a wallet and a passport holder.  That was nice of him, but I really didn't want to carry them in my backpack, so I left them in the next hotel I stayed in.

After a long breakfast the next morning with Tambir and Olivier, we all went our separate ways.  About 11 I took a CNG 15 miles east to a little town called Sariakundi, and then a rickshaw to the banks of the wide Jamuna River, the river that flows through Tibet as the Yarlung Tsangpo and through India as the Brahmaputra.  This area is flooded during the monsoon, but now there are big sandy islands in the wide river.  When the waters are low these islands, called chars, are inhabited and cultivated.  Drying in the sun on the cement embankment lay masses of enormous chili peppers, some very dark red, some somewhat lighter red, and some orange.  Men and women were sifting through them, throwing out the bad ones.  Only a few boats were on the river.  I thought about trying to get a boat to one of the chars, but eventually just walked back towards Sariakundi, and I spent the next five hours walking on narrow roads, often damaged from the floods, through villages and past watery rice paddies. 

The people were very friendly and this turned out to be perhaps my favorite day in Bangladesh.  In one village kids had just gotten out of school.  They were very shy.  At the village edge a friendly woman was packing wet cow manure onto sticks a foot or so long, and then leaning them in a line on a fence to dry in the sun.  I watched her do it and took some photographs, which she smilingly posed for.  Others did, too:  old men, women, kids.  They were all very friendly.  Along the way I saw many stacks of rice stalks and some houses only of corrugated metal, which must be miserable in the hot season. 

I passed by an outdoor brick factory, with a tall smokestack, and went in to explore.  Stacks of bricks lay everywhere, gray ones not yet fired and red ones, stamped PAT, already fired.  The workers were all very friendly, so I walked up the bamboo ramp to the flat top of the enormous kiln with bricks being fired inside below me.  On top are holes, maybe 3 or 4 inches square, with round metal covers.  Two men were using metal hooks to pull up the metal covers and pour coal chips and dust into the openings.  I looked down some of the holes as the covers were lifted and could see a bright orange glow and feel considerable heat.  There must have been about 20 of those holes. 

On the other side of the kiln men were carrying bricks that had already been fired and had now cooled from the kiln to a stacking site.  They carried the bricks in slings on their shoulders, with ten bricks on a little wooden platform on each side.  Further away were rows of newly made soft gray bricks drying in the sun, with a big mud puddle and some sort of brick making machine, now idle.  Some of the workers showed me how the bricks are made.  I've never seen so many brick factories as I saw in Bangladesh.

I kept walking and met more friendly people.  A group of girls, mostly shy, spoke some English.  One spoke good English and told me she was 9, in grade 6, and the daughter of a school teacher.  Soon I was being followed by a big crowd of kids and adults.  One big guy asked me to stop for tea at a little wooden shack and insisted on paying as I was his guest.  After we finished and had talked a while, a boy came up and invited me to visit his secondary school.  The classrooms were of corrugated metal and dark, with few or no windows and wooden benches and tables.  He took me first to a raucous English class.  The teacher, over 65 he told me, took me to meet the headmaster.  They took me to a Form 7 class, with one girl among all the boys.  She spoke some English and held her own among all those unruly boys.  I was told her father is in the United States.  Students by now had in large part deserted their classrooms to follow me around.  I was told there are 600 students in the school.  I was led to a Form 10 classroom, the highest in the school and all boys.  The small room was dark and crowded, another corrugated metal room with only one small window and no electricity.  There was not much discipline other than yelling by the teachers.  Just before I went in I was introduced to the agriculture teacher, the only one I met in Islamic dress.  Inside, the class put on a performance for me.  First, some small kids performed acrobatics on the floor.  Then, one kid sang, though his noisy classmates seemed to pay no attention.  Next, two or three boys acted out, quite forcefully, what seemed to be a scene from a play.  Finally, a drummer played. 

I left accompanied by a sea of friendly students.  The English teacher invited me to tea at another roadside tea shack, and told me that he had been teaching for 45 years.  At the tea shop a mass of kids swarmed around me, wanting to shake my hand.  There were adults, too, all very friendly.  Finally, I broke away and continued my walk, reaching another embankment, or ghat, of the Jamuna River, with good views of the river and chars.  I watched wooden ferry boats coming and going.  By then it was 4 o'clock or later.  I got to talking to a guy who told me he was studying to be a pilot in Bangalore (in India).  He offered to take me to the CNG stand in Sariakandi on his motorcycle.  Three of us rode on the motorcycle and on the way we stopped for tea, my third of the afternoon, this time with ginger.  I left on a CNG about 5 for the 40 minute ride back to Bogra, a beautiful drive through rice paddies in the late afternoon.  The streets were packed in Bogra. 

The next morning I left Bogra for Rangpur, 65 miles north and near the northern border with India.  With the continuing transport problems, it wasn't easy.  It took more than three and a half hours and entailed an auto rickshaw, 3 CNGs, and two buses.  The auto rickshaw just took me through town to the CNGs heading north.  The three CNGs got me only about 20 miles from Bogra, to Gabindaganj.  From there I got a bus to Palabari, less than 10 miles away.  Finally, a crowded bus took me all the rest of the way to Rangpur.  Total fares all the way were a little over two dollars.  The road was busy and I saw several other buses.  Perhaps the opposition is not very strong in this northwest region.  As always, we passed lots of rice on the way.

After lunch I went to the domed Tajhat Palace, built in the 19th century.  It is in poor shape, though it does have a white marble staircase leading up to it.  Roman statues used to line the steps, but no more. The frontage of the palace is something like 260 feet.   It was built by a Hindu from Punjab who was a successful jeweler and then became a zamindar, or landowner, acquiring the title of raja.  I headed next to Carmichael College in a spacious area at the edge of town.  Established in 1916, it has some deteriorating Indo-Saracen buildings.  I saw a plaque thanking zamindars for donating the land.  The grounds, despite the trees and grass, were not particularly inviting.  Much of the grass was dead and trash was everywhere.  An orange sun was setting as I took a rickshaw back to the city center.

The next morning shortly before 10 I left on a bus heading 25 miles west to Saidpur, a slow, packed bus making lots of stops through a countryside of rice and other crops.  From there another 25 miles southwest by bus took me to Dinajpur in the northwest corner of Bangladesh.  I arrived about 12:30, found a hotel, and then hopped on a bus heading north and for the most part retracing the last part of the route I had just taken.  Kantanagar, where I was heading, is only 10 miles away from Dinjpur, but the bus was very slow, and packed with people.  Those ten miles took about an hour, and I didn't get off till about 2. 

From the road I had about a 15 minute walk to the Kantanagar Temple.  I crossed the river via a long new bridge, with crops growing on the exposed silt in the riverbed below.  There was road work beyond the just completed bridge and villages on the route.  Just before reaching the temple I stopped to watch women standing in water planting rice. 

The brick and terracotta temple, in a courtyard surrounded by a wall with offices and pilgrim quarters inside, was built in 1752 by a maharaja from Dinajpur.  It is covered with superb surface decoration with lots of figures.  I spent two hours there and very much enjoyed it.  There were few others there, all local people.  Some seemed to enjoy watching me looking closely at the panels. The sun had been out when I arrived but the sky was cloudy when I left.  The women ankle-deep or deeper in water were almost finished with their rice planting for the day.  The sun came out as I walked back with lots of friendly people on the way. 

The bus ride back to Dinajpur was slow.  Back in town, I walked to the century old Dinajpur Rajbari, mostly in ruins except for two temples.  I've read that Dinajpur is 38% Hindu.  One of the temples, brightly painted, had a few folks in the courtyard, including a very curious little kid and his friendly mother.  I took an auto rickshaw to the train station to see about a ticket for the next day.  With  few buses running, I had had difficulty getting all the way to Dinajpur, in Bangladesh's far northwest corner.  Now I had to figure out how to get back to the center of the country.  At the station, however, I was told there were no tickets for reserved seats on the next day's train to Dhaka.  With few buses running, lots of people wanted to take the train.   

February 5-7, 2015: Rajshahi, Puthia, Gaur, and Natore

In Rajshahi on the 5th, I wanted to visit the little town of Puthia, about 15 miles to the east, but with the political disturbances continuing, it took some trouble to find a bus.  None were leaving from the bus station, but I was advised to take a rickshaw to a traffic circle, and there I did find a bus that would pass through Kushtia.  It was battered and had a big crack in its windshield, so perhaps the owners figured it would be no great loss if it were bombed. 

I arrived in Puthia, full of dilapidated palaces and temples, a little after 11 and spent the day there.  From the spot on the highway where the bus dropped me off I walked perhaps a third of a mile south on a narrow road filled with carts and rickshaws until I reached the tall Shiva temple, built in 1823, with a pond and a smaller temple beside it.  Some of the stone carvings on it were damaged by the Pakistanis in the 1971 war.  An older man came up to me and we started talking.  He offered to serve as my guide.  I didn't really think I needed a guide, but he was a nice guy, so I agreed.  We walked to the nearby Puthia Palace, with a rubbish covered lawn in front.  The palace, built by a woman in 1895 in honor of her mother-in-law, is locked up and in very bad shape.  It must once have been grand, with columns and colored windows.  It now is said to be filled with bats. 

In a courtyard to the back of the palace is a wonderful temple, the Govinda Temple, built between 1823 and 1895.  (My guide told me about 25% of the inhabitants of Puthia are Hindu.)  The temple is a large square building, two or three stories high, covered with red terracotta tiles filled with intricate carvings, mostly of Krishna and Radha.  A priest was sitting on the ledge in front and there were ruins behind the temple.  I enjoyed looking over all the detail.  Beyond is a large pond, another, smaller palace, now government offices, and another, smaller temple, in the Bengali hut style, also covered with terracotta tiles with figures.  A little further stood the ruins of an earlier palace among vegetation and betel nut trees and yet another small temple.  We continued walking, passing another large pond and reaching three more temples, two covered with terracotta panels.  They, too, were filled with figures and I enjoyed examining the detail.

By then my guide was hinting that it was past his lunchtime, so I gave him 200 taka, for which he seemed inordinately thankful, and continued on my own.  I walked back to the Shiva Temple and noticed nearby, in some small lanes, a Hindu wedding party, with the bride and groom getting ready to leave in a van.  Music was playing and the people were friendly.  I walked again to the Puthia Palace, with a small gaggle of aggressive geese pursuing me on the lawn, and the Govinda Temple.  A group of 14 Japanese tourists showed up.  I walked again to the ruins and temples behind the palace and was followed by two shy, but ultimately very friendly, girls.  They posed for photos. 

I walked back to the highway, getting there about 4:30.  Finding a bus was difficult, but a friendly guy in an auto rickshaw offered to take me halfway back to Rajshahi.  I shared it with two friendly Hindu women and three very perplexed little kids.  They let me take some photos of them.  I was able to get a second auto rickshaw back to the train station in Rajshahi, getting there about 6.  The auto rickshaw trips back were very pleasant, with friendly fellow passengers and lovely scenery, very green, with rice, wheat, mango trees and ponds to be seen under a setting sun.

The next morning I wanted to go to the site of the former Bengal capital of Gaur, with ruins dating to the 15th and 16th centuries.  I had visited Gaur in April 2013, but could only visit those ruins on the Indian side of the border.  The ruins on the Bangladeshi side are about 50 miles northwest of Rajshahi, but getting there wasn't easy.  About 8:30 on a cold, overcast morning I left in what Bangladeshis call a CNG (an auto rickshaw powered by compressed natural gas).  Traveling in that open vehicle was very cold that morning.  The men in it with me wore thick coats and scarfs.  The road passed rice paddies, rice stacks, and in places cow manure wrapped onto sticks, like some sort of long, awful kebab, to dry in the sun. This CNG took me only as far as the town of Chapai Nawabganj, 30 miles from Rajshahi.  From there I had to hire another CNG to take me to Gaur.  About 10 a weak sun broke through.  Passing lots of mango trees on the way, we came across a long line of parked trucks as we neared the border. 

About 11 I finally arrived at Sona Masjid, a black basalt mosque built between 1493 and 1526, with some interesting designs in relief on the stone.  It was deserted.  From there I walked to the ruins of a palace, another mosque, and a mausoleum, and then along the dusty main road towards the Indian border.   The road, in bad shape, was lined with what seemed to be gravel factories, so it was not a pleasant stroll.  Fortunately, a guy on a motorcycle gave me a lift to the ruins of the 15th century Darasbari Mosque, set in a quiet grassy area filled with mango trees.  He then took me to the nearby ruins of a madrassa and finally almost to the border, from where I could walk to the 1490 Khania Dighi Mosque.  A group of men and boys were just leaving prayers at another mosque, and several of the boys, some in robes and skullcaps, led me through village streets and a mango grove to the Khania Dighi Mosque, near a big tank and set among mango trees.  This single domed mosque is in excellent condition and is covered with terracotta floral designs.  The big dome is made of tiny bricks.  A couple of old men were at the mosque and the boys who had led me to it followed me all around, inside and out as I looked around.  They were very friendly and polite, happy to pose for photos. 

The boys walked me back to their village near the main road, where I hired a CNG to take me back to Chapai Nawabganj.  It was mid-afternoon, but the sun was mostly hidden and the ride was cold.  I got back to Rajshahi about 5 and, having had no lunch, headed to that friendly restaurant for an early dinner of chicken biryani.  I hadn't seen much of Rajshahi yet, so I walked to the banks of the river (the Ganges, called the Padma in Bangladesh) just before nightfall.  Lots of  people were out and about.  I could see fields across the wide river.  I've read the border with India is not the river, but a little more than a mile beyond the river.  Upriver loomed a huge sandbank. 

The next day was warmer, and it was sunny when I took a CNG to near the riverside.  I walked along the Padma on the riverbank, much less crowded than the evening before.  There wasn't much to see that I hadn't seen the evening before, other than the Baro Kuthi, a former indigo warehouse.  Indigo production in this area was very profitable in the 19th century, though only the landlords prospered while the workers suffered, leading to the Indigo Revolt in 1859-61.  From the river I walked through a very congested, but interesting street market, to Rajshahi Government College, dating from 1873 when several maharajas donated money for its establishment.  It contains several beautiful colonial buildings and lovely gardens filled with flowers, mostly dahlias, I think.  Lots of students were around and I noticed many were checking scores posted on an outdoor bulletin board.  Most of the women were veiled.  I wandered around for a while and then headed to the museum, which was closed.  On the way a beautiful young woman said hello, quite a surprising thing, but she said it with a perfect American accent and told me she was from the Bronx and visiting relatives. 

I left Rajshahi on a 12:30 bus heading to Bogra that passed through Puthia and dropped me off in Natore, 25 miles east of Rajshahi.  A French guy I met at the hotel and I headed to Natore Rajbari, a mid-18th century mansion, or actually several mansions, in a park-like setting.  We spent the afternoon there, a pleasant place with a few Bangladeshi tourists also on the grounds.  Many of the buildings are in ruins, and even those that are not are nonetheless in dilapidated condition.  The architecture is very European, as is the statuary, including a surprising number of bare naked ladies.  There are several ponds and Hindu temples, and lots of trees and greenery.  People were very friendly.  It seems that during colonial times in East Bengal, now Bangladesh, a large proportion of the landlords were Hindu, with the Muslims largely poor, though there were also wealthy Muslim landlords and poor Hindus.  I've read that Hindus comprised something like 28% of East Bengal at the 1941 census, before partition, but that at the time of the 1971 war they were perhaps half that, and less than 10% now. 

February 1-4, 2015: Khulna, Bagerhat, Jessore, and Kushtia

The opposition political party, the BNP, had called a general strike starting February 1.  I spent the morning wandering around Khulna.  A few shops were shut, but most weren't.  I walked to the river and along a narrow street full of craftsmen along it.  People were friendly and eventually I reached the train station.  Oddly, near the tracks right in the station a mass of peppercorns, or perhaps some variety of lentils, was drying in the sun, and two women were walking through them using their feet to turn them.  They were highly amused at my photographing them.  Nearby was a large room, a sort of warehouse, full of onions.  I looked inside and was invited in by the friendly workers.  Giant scales were at hand to weigh the onions.  Walking back to my hotel I saw a pro-government march.

I wanted to go to Bagerhat, 15 miles east, for the day, but because of feared violence no buses were running from downtown Khulna.  Instead, I had to take a crowded ferry across the river and from there a small bus for the scenic trip to Bagerhat, with rice paddies, coconut palms, banana trees, and even some pigs along the way.  The pigs were a bit of a surprise in Muslim Bangladesh.  Because of all the delays I didn't get there until 3, getting off at the 15th century Shait Gumbad Mosque.  This stout brick mosque has 77 domes (though the name means "60 Dome Mosque') and was being repaired, with much scaffolding.  In fact, the scaffolding and repair methods seemed out of the 15th century, too.  I walked to two much smaller single domed mosques nearby through pretty countryside and villages and then back and to yet another mosque just across the road from the Shait Gumbad.  I then took one of those electric rickshaws another mile or so east to the tomb of the Sufi mystic who founded Bagerhat and built the mosques.  It was nothing special, much modernized.  A tank is to the south, with another couple of mosques nearby, which I walked to as the sun was setting.  Finally, there was one last mosque to see, to the north of the tomb.  It, too, dates from the 15th century, with a single dome, but a large one, more than 35 feet in diameter.  By the time I got there, though, it was dark.  I walked back to the road to catch transport back to Khulna and was told there was none, because of the "general strike" and the threat of violence.  There were quite a few policemen around and one of them told me to wait and there would be a bus. One did come through just before 7 and the police put me on it.  We reached Khulna about 8 after an uneventful, but chilly, trip.

The next morning I left Khulna on a dirty and dilapidated train for Jessore, about 35 miles northwest and only about 10 miles from the Indian border.  My first class ticket cost me a little over a dollar.  There were three others in my dingy compartment, while the second class compartments (ticket only about 30 cents) were crowded.  The train passed dusty little towns and lots of very green newly planted rice in watery paddies.  Reaching Jessore about 11, after an hour and a half trip, I checked into a hotel.  There wasn't much to see in town, other than a big red and white brick colonial era courthouse with a little park in front, full of people.  On one side of the courthouse was a sort of car and scooter junk yard, with some interesting old vehicles in great disrepair.  Nearby was an interesting bazaar, with fruit and vegetables, and there were also chickens, ducks, fish, and goats.  I walked along narrow streets with lots of little shops, only some of which were closed.  Quite a few women were veiled, and I saw hennaed beards and hair (on the men, not the women!)  The day was sunny but it was cool in the shade. 

The next morning about 9 I left Jessore by train, heading north.  A captain of a dredging vessel sat across from me and was interesting to talk to as we traveled through pretty countryside with lots of bright green new rice growing, along with corn, vegetables and bananas.  I also saw lots of palm trees, some with pots to catch the sap.  The train skirted the Indian border before reaching Poradaha before noon.  From Poradaha it took half hour trip to get to Kushtia in one of those golf cart-like electric richshaws, passing warehouses with lots of rice drying in the sun.  In Kushtia the friendly dredge captain led me to the hotel I wanted to stay in.  After lunch I walked around a bit in that friendly town, with lots of waves from people, on a much warmer day than the past few, and then took a rickshaw to the Shrine of Lalon Shah.  He was a 19th century mystic and minstrel, acclaimed for his religious tolerance.  The shrine itself wasn't much, but the atmosphere of the place was pleasant.  In a pavilion behind the tomb musicians played, with drums, harmoniums (harmonia?), and ektaras, which are one-stringed instruments.  I took a rickshaw back to the train station in time to see the departure of the late afternoon train to Rajshahi, where I was heading the next day.  It left late and crowded at 5:45, just before dark.

The next day was warm, too, a welcome change from the chilly days in the Sundarbans and after, and in fact from my arrival in Dhaka two weeks earlier.  About 9:30 I took a rickshaw to the now dry and sandy riverbed at the northern edge of town and walked across that almost desert-like expanse to the other bank, maybe half a mile away.  Lots of other people were doing the same.  A big dredge sat in what seemed a pond in the sand.  Near the far end of the sandy riverbed a temporary bamboo bridge crossed over a trickle of water, which easily could have been passed on foot without the bridge.  On the other side I hired an electric rickshaw to take me the five or so miles to Kuthibari, the mid-19th century mansion of Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal's most famous poet.  The trip there was very interesting, past villages and lots of newly planted rice.  Some of the houses were entirely of metal, and must be almost intolerable in the hot season.  I saw lots of dung being dried for fuel.  The road was paved, but very potholed, and it took 45 minutes to reach Kuthibari.  At times we drove along the wide Padma River (the Ganges, but called the Padma in Bangladesh).  It joins the Brahmaputra (called the Jamuna in Bangladesh) about 40 miles downriver, to the east. 

Kuthibari, two or three stories high and set in gardens, is now a museum.  It is a pleasant place, and must have seemed very grand in the 19th century.  Inside is some furniture and many great photographs.  On the walls are some of Tagore's poems, in English.  The Tagores were landlords with several mansions, including one in Calcutta and one Shanti Niketan, both in India.  I walked around a bit outside.  The gardens were full of flowers, with rice and rapeseed growing beyond. 

After an hour and a half there, I came back to town, had lunch, and searched unsuccessfully for a bus to Rajshahi, to the northwest and on the Ganges, with India on the other side.  So I had to take the train.  It left after 5:30, only slightly less late than the day before.  The train was crowded, but I got a seat.  The ticket was 125 taka, only about a dollar and a half, for what turned out to be almost a four hour journey.  The train was very slow.  Leaving at dusk we reached Poradaha 15 or 20 minutes later, and then spent 20 minutes there.  By the time we left Poradaha the sky was dark, with an orange moon eventually rising, one day past full.  About 7 the train crossed the wide Padma River over a long bridge, formerly called the Hardinge Bridge, after a British viceroy, and now named after Lalon Shah.  The bridge crossing took three or four minutes, and it was frustrating not to be able to see anything in the dark.  The train trip was slow, dirty, and unpleasant, though a friendly family of five sat with me.  Through the train's aisles came a never ceasing stream of vendors and beggars.  The train finally reached Rajshahi's big train station about 9:15.  I checked into a hotel and found a very friendly place for dinner.  I didn't get to bed until midnight.

January 28-31, 2015: The Rocket and the Sundarbans

[Note:  Internet cafes were scarce for the rest of my 2014-2015 trip, and I had no laptop with me, so I had to give up keeping this journal online.  However, I did make notes, almost daily, and have used those to reconstruct the trip more than a year later.]

On the morning of the 28th I arrived at the banks of the river in Barisal about 5:30 and watched the old paddle-wheeler known as the Rocket arrive from Dhaka about twenty minutes later.  I bought a deck ticket for only 80 taka (about a dollar), boarded, and the Rocket left about 6:30, with few passengers.  There are sleeping berths and a dining room, but those are for first class passengers.  I was able, however, to wander into the first class section and look around.  The paddle wheel on the Rockets (there are only a few of these old ships left, built in the 1920's and '30's) is on the side, and I stood on the platform above the big wheel as the Rocket headed down the wide, mist covered river.  Soon the captain, in the pilot house on top of the ship, invited me up on the narrow walkway running along the top of the ship from the pilot house to the bow.  He was a friendly man, 55 years old he told, wearing a dhoti and skullcap and sporting a white beard.  Later he told me that his son had drowned, though I now don't remember the circumstances.  As the sun rose over the misty river the Rocket headed south and then west, passing under a long bridge just south of Barisal.  There was little wind, but it was chilly up there in the early morning on the wide river, somewhere between a mile and a half mile wide, I would guess.  A few small boats were also on the river and there were birds chirping in the riverside trees, the trees sometimes enshrouded in mist.  The Rocket passed fields and villages and brickworks as the sun rose.  Eventually a few others, all Bangladeshis, came onto the walkway on top.  I seemed to be the only tourist on the ship.

About 8:30 we docked at the sizeable town of Jhalokati for half an hour.  I walked along a street leading from the dock, where fish and betel nut were on sale.  Women were washing pots and pans in the river.  Just west of the town the river turns south, but the Rocket headed into a smaller channel heading west.  This narrower channel, maybe 300-500 feet wide, was more scenic, with trees along the banks along with fields and villages.  There were palm trees and banana trees, and fields of rice and vegetables.  About 10:30 the Rocket turned south into a larger channel and made a brief stop on the east bank.  Continuing south it soon passed a junction with a big river coming from the northwest and at 11 docked  at Hularhat on the west bank.  Here I reluctantly got off.  The Rocket used to go all the way to Khulna, where I was heading, but does no longer.  It stops and turns around now at another town maybe halfway between Hularhat and Khulna and from that town it is supposed to be difficult to get to Khulna. 

From the dock I took an electric rickshaw, a little like a golf cart, through trees and past small channels to Pirojpur, only a few miles away, and from there I caught a bus northwest to Khulna, about 35 miles away.  The almost two hour journey passed through very scenic countryside, with lots of trees and lots of very green, newly planted rice paddies.  About halfway we passed through Bagerhat and by its 15th century mosque.  The bus crossed by bridge another big river just before we reached Khulna before 2.  Southern Bangladesh is a maze of rivers, as the Ganges and Brahmaputra, having joined together just to the north, spread out in a giant delta.  I checked into a hotel and then went to enquire about trips to the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove swamp and a national park.  I had expected difficulty in finding a tour, as there are few tourists in Bangladesh, but luckily I found a three day tour leaving that night, and booked a spot for 15,000 taka (about $194).  I went back to my hotel to rest and shower before boarding the boat about 9.  There were 19 of us as passengers, though some of those were still on the way on a bus from Dhaka.  I met some of the others and went to bed in my tiny cabin about 10.  My Japanese cabinmate appeared to have an extreme insect phobia and sprayed the small cabin with insect repellant before lighting a mosquito coil.  I slept restlessly.

About midnight I heard the boat start up.  The others on the bus from Dhaka must have arrived.  In the darkness we headed down the river south to Mongla at the edge of the national park.  The boat's engine stopped at 3:30 and the boat anchored just off Mongla.  I got up at 7 and at 7:30 the boat started up again, heading south into the vast mangrove forest and interconnecting waterways of the Sundarbans.  An estimated 400 Bengal tigers live in the Sundarbans, the largest concentration of tigers in the world, but because of the thick vegetation and waterways there are very difficult to spot.  In fact, there are only very rarely seen by tourists, or anyone else.  Our guide told me he had been on about 250 tours and had seen a tiger just twice, both fleeting glimpses very early in the morning. 

The boat headed south along a very wide channel and then into a smaller but still wide channel, at first passing a few ocean going ships.  We passed no villages and not much wildlife, though we did see birds, including kingfishers.  We also two crocodiles on the muddy banks at low tide, one over 15 feet long, and here and there small fishing boats, like canoes. 

Shortly after 1 pm the boat turned into a narrower channel, still heading south, though it widened as we continued.  The banks were lined with mangroves for the most part, with some other trees.  It wasn't terribly scenic, but it was pleasant cruising in the sun for hours and hours.  The folks on board were a friendly bunch, about one third Bangladeshi and two thirds foreigners.  The crew was great, very friendly and serving good meals.

About 3 and having traveled about 50 miles from Khulna, we were nearing the southern end of the Sundarbans at the Bay of Bengal.  In fact, we were near the southeast edge of the Sundarbans, which stretch into India, about two thirds in Bangladesh and one third in India.  The boat dropped anchor and we took a small boat onto the shore at a place called Kotka.  The muddy ground is covered completely at high tide during full and new moons and the leaves of the ubiquitous mangroves were all cropped underneath at the same level -- by deer.  We saw a sizeable herd of deer (the spotted chital), between 50 and 100 of them, many of them with impressive antlers.  A few wild pigs were also around.  A few of the crew cut off some of the mangrove branches and the deer quickly gathered their courage and came to eat the leaves.  We kept our distance and they ate quickly and then dispersed.  With our guides (one with a rifle) we took a walk along the muddy ground through mangroves and a few other trees, and some mud-covered bushes.  There were thousands of mangrove roots coming up through the mud.  We passed an old, abandoned salt works and reached another channel before heading back, reaching a muddy beach to the south with the Bay of Bengal stretching out onto the southern horizon.  Gnarly roots broke out from the trees along the shore.  There was a little broken pottery along the shore and a tall cell phone tower nearby.  Other than that, no sign of human habitation.  We headed back to our boat in the channel as the sun set, arriving at the boat just at sunset.  That evening, after dinner, we watched a very good documentary entitled "Swamp Tiger."  We saw no other tigers on the trip.

The next morning about 6:30 we all got on a small boat and spent an hour going down a scenic narrow channel to the east.  We spotted a two foot long monitor lizard on a branch, but not much else.  There were only a few birds.  We docked and walked to a watchtower with a few shy deer around before heading back.  We got back to the boat about 9 for breakfast as we headed north and then east into a narrow channel just wide enough for the boat to pass through, though it later widened.  Eventually, we turned south again into a wide channel.  We saw a large crocodile slide into the river at our approach and we saw some birds, including brahminy kites. 

About 11 we arrived at a place called Kochikhali and docked.  We took our small boat to a sand bank on the Bay of Bengal where we spent about an hour and a half.  A chilly wind blew from the north and there was no wildlife but small crabs.  After lunch on the big boat we left about 3 on another small boat excursion down a narrow channel to the west, spotting a few deer and the tracks of an otter.  A big bird flew from tree to tree ahead of us as we approached, avoiding us.  We disembarked and walked back to the channel in which our boat was anchored, passing through mangroves and then a grassy area, with grass cutters' huts, and seeing a few deer.  We were on our boat again by about 4:30.  We headed north into a chilly wind, with the sun setting into haze after 5.  We continued north until about 7, when we stopped for dinner.  After dinner the boat continued north for another two hours, reaching a place called Tambulbunda about 10:30, where we anchored for the night.

The next morning we once again boarded our small boat and were quietly paddled up a very scenic narrow channel for more than an hour.  Mist covered the water and shrouded the outline of trees along the banks.  Egrets and kingfishers flew by and we passed two small fishing boats with big wicker fish traps at the stern.  Mangroves and nipa palms lined the banks while other skeletal trees overhung the river.  Birds chirped and it was a very pleasant trip.  We turned around and motored back to our boat for breakfast and then set off about 8.

First we headed south along a wide channel but soon turned west into a narrow, twisting, and scenic channel for about three hours.  We saw another big crocodile on the bank.  About 11 we docked at a place called Harbaria at the mouth of a small channel.  We spent about an hour there on a wooden plank walkway above the muddy ground in a scenic forested area.  Monkeys frolicked in the trees as we left.  Our boat quickly turned north into the very wide Pasar River, perhaps a mile wide.  About 2 we reached the northern edge of the Sundarbans, where the mangroves disappeared, and about 3 we passed by the large city of Mongla, with a huge cement factory and a large port.  We passed by maybe a dozen gray naval vessels and five white coast guard vessels docked along the shore and passed by much larger ocean going cargo vessels in the river.  As we continued up river we once again passed villages and agricultural fields, absent in the Sundarbans.  We passed under the big bridge near Khulna and anchored after 6:30.  After dinner on board we were taken to the shore.  I got back to my hotel about 8:30 for a welcome hot water bucket bath after three days without bathing on the boat, which only had cold water.  The political tension in the country, including public bus bombings, had intensified during our tour and the tour company had arranged a bus to travel all night for those of our group who wanted to get to Dhaka.  All but five of us did so.