The Bangladesh countryside
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Finally leaving Dhaka after more than a week, we took the Rocket boat ride to Khulna last Saturday night and, to our surprise, found our second-class cabin to be pretty nice – cleaner and more comfortable than plenty of hotel rooms we’ve stayed in on the subcontinent, and a major step up from what we’re accustomed to on boats from our experiences in Indonesia five years ago and the week-long, semi-disastrous trip to Timbuktu last year. In fact, the only problem this time was that the journey was too short; with foggy mornings in Bangladesh at this time of year, we barely had a chance to look out our window before it was time to get off.
We spent Monday wandering (and later getting stuck in without our bags, owing to the cancellation of all forms of motorised transport because of the national elections that day) around the small town of Bagerhat. The inconvenience aside, Bagerhat was quite a lovely place after the intensity of Old Dhaka. An enforced one-hour cycle-rickshaw ride through the countryside was very pleasant, and the scenery of palm trees, ponds and rice fields around the 15th century mosques and tombs was lovely as well.
Yesterday we embarked on the long journey (a cycle-rickshaw, a bus, another bus, a border crossing, another cycle-rickshaw, a train, and an auto-rickshaw) from Khulna back to Calcutta, where we spent a highly uneventful New Year’s Eve for the second time in the last six years.
Our brief experience in Bangladesh was a positive one, and more enjoyable than we had thought it would be thanks to Julie and our low expectations coming in (which were partly Julie’s fault to begin with, it must be said!). The extreme curiosity of Bangladeshis towards foreigners was a welcome change from the $-sign-on-your-forehead hassle of India, and it’s always nice to be off the beaten track. It’s not the sort of place I’d recommend, owing to the lack of major tourist sights and tourist infrastructure, but it was a nice way to finish the year.
It has been a bit of a strange existence for us in the Bangladeshi capital these past few days. We spend our days exploring the old city and acting much as ... 
Nick