Further Wanderings

A comfy Air Con bus with lots of leg room is a good way to start out a visit to any country. It puts the mind in a relaxed, pleasant state, and leaves one ready to enjoy new experiences and not let minor irritants become major annoyances.

All of this goes double when the country in question is one like Bangladesh where tourist infrastructure and, indeed, foreign visitors are virtually unknown.

Our first experiences with Bangladesh were pleasant. The Benapole immigration post didn’t look like it would be a model of efficiency, but got us processed and across the border quickly and with relatively little trouble. Once across, things got even easier, as about half of the people who noticed us walking along the road sprang to our side in order to ask questions about where we were going and provide advice about how to get there.

 

The Benapole Border post.  We were terribly worried that our Bangla visas said we were “entering/exiting” by “air/land” but in the end no one really seemed to care.  Whew.

Even the rickshaw driver who took us from the border post to the bus parking area got in on the act. After stopping, he stood around watching us for so long that I began to think he was angling for extra payment or something, but in fact he just wanted to hang around long enough to ensure that we got our bus tickets without problems and made it on to the correct bus.

Things didn’t really change with our arrival in the town of Jessore. We found a hotel and then went out for a walk, and seemingly EVERYONE we came in contact with had questions, comments or advice for us. Far and away the most common question was “what is your country?” but “what is your name?” “where are you going?” and “why are you here?” put in plenty of appearances.

This last was actually a very good question, and not one I had a particularly satisfactory answer to. We’d spoken to plenty of people in India about our upcoming visit to Bangladesh, and after removing the horror-stricken looks from their faces (Indians seem to regard their neighbour as the scariest, most forbidding and backward place on Earth) they would universally ask “why do you want to go there!?”

The best answer I could come up with was “because not many others do.” And whether this was a good enough reason or not, our first days in Bangladesh made us glad we’d come.

One thing that understandably accompanies a lack of tourists is a lack of exploitation of tourists. Even aside from their friendliness, the Bangla people were wonderful to deal with because of their honesty. Wherever we went we were charged almost the same prices as locals paid. Even rickshaw drivers, usually my arch-nemeses, almost became trusted friends in Khulna. Between the honesty of their fare-quotes and the fact that they worked so hard for a pitifully small amount of money, I was almost always happy to take whatever fare they quoted, and add a 20-100% tip depending on what change I had in my pocket.

Rickshaw and mural, Khulna.  Rickshaws are EVERYWHERE in Bangladesh.  There are very few cars on the roads, and not even very many motorcycles.  The vast majority of the population still gets around by human-power

Another fine example of the Bangla sense of honesty and hospitality came when, one day at breakfast, the proprietor of the restaurant came to our table and after welcoming us warmly and at length to his country, presented the bill, apologising that he had to charge us, as visitors, anything at all.

Yes, we have bananas.  While most things in Bangladesh are very, very cheap, fresh fruit is surprisingly pricey, with (say) mangoes, costing almost as much here as in a supermarket in Canada (though the mangoes here beat the pants off the ones we get back home.) 

Walking around Jessore was amazing, and I beamed almost non-stop, as we wandered down green country lanes, picked our way across rickshaw-packed streets, chomped on delicious Mughlai Paratha (stuffed pan fried flatbread) and even picked daintily at mango preserves in the home of an electrician and his brother who had invited us round for a visit.

A beautiful river at Jessore.  Bangladesh is composed of almost nothing BUT river delta, so there are an awful lot of such pretty little channels in the country

Jessore was a lovely first taste of Bangladesh, and Khulna immersed us deeper into this otherworldly place. Everywhere we went, children and adults alike would shout “Hello!” “Hi!” “What is your home?” or any other bit of English they knew. Stopping by a shop in the street almost guaranteed a longer chat and an invitation to sit down and have a cup of cha (strong tea made with sweetened condensed milk and lots of sugar.) Sitting down in one place for more than 30 seconds (and I DO NOT exaggerate here) would invariably draw a crowd of 6 or 10 or 20 people, all just curious to have a look at someone so new and so different. The ones who spoke any English at all would ask the usual questions, while those who didn’t, or were too shy would simply stare, often open mouthed with wonder.

For weeks the Canadian flag patch had been coming off my pack.  I finally got around to getting it fixed in Khulna.  I chatted with some bystanders as this gentleman sewed it back on for me.  They were astonished that I’d sewed it MYSELF the first time around, and even more surprised that I’d considered doing so again (apparently such work is often considered “beneath” well educated Bangladeshis) 

This boy worked at the cha stall across from our hotel in Khulna.  Here he is seen chopping fuel logs (made of compressed sawdust) into bits to feed the fire.  Sarah was concerned for his fingers when he looked up to have his photo taken, but no worries, he is still fine, all digits intact 

Though Khulna wasn’t a big city, it was still one of Bangladesh’s largest. Bangladesh is the most densely populated large country on Earth, but this is accomplished not by packing people into huge metropolises, but by inhabiting almost every piece of ground that is fit to be lived upon. Thus there seems to be relatively little actual countryside in Bangladesh… there are really just places where the people are a bit thicker or thinner on the ground. This makes any road trip, whether by bus, rickshaw or foot something of a social exercise as well as a transportation one.

A muddy street.  While most of the roads we’d seen in Bangladesh are in surprisingly good shape, you did find the odd one like this, which had been turned into one giant mud puddle by the afternoon’s monsoon rain 

You may note that the above contains relatively little discussion of what we actually DID in Jessore and Khulna. With good reason. Bangladesh, or at least this part of it didn’t have many obvious tourist attractions, and it was really simply BEING there that was the main attraction. We did, however, spend one day doing actual sightseeing. Our visit to the town of Bagerhat took us to several 15th century mosques and tombs, but as lovely as they were, the main attraction was still just meeting the Bangla people and enjoying the lovely countryside and the picturesque laneways that connected the main roads with the villages with the archaeological sites.

The exterior of the Shait Gumbad (literally “60 domed” which is odd, as it actually has 77 domes) mosque.  While this mosque was very peaceful, the nearby tomb of Khan Jahan Ali (the Turkish Sufi who brought Islam to Bangladesh) received lots of domestic tourists and thus featured dozens of slightly pushy souvenier salesmen, restauranteurs and men asking for Baksheesh (bribe/tip) for doing little or nothing.

The inside of the Shait Gumbad mosque.  While we were here we started chatting with a couple of Bangla visitors.  After a bit, an older man with a longer beard came and shushed us.  Our friends commented, much to our amusement, “this area is very beautiful, but very conservative.  All these bin Ladens telling us what to do.”

While people in Bangladesh were friendly, this example was pretty extreme.  We were beckoned (dragged in fact!) into a home as we walked down the streets, and presented with huge plates of fruit, cakes, pastries, babies… For the longest time we had no idea how we were going to disentangle ourselves (while most of the family was lovely, there was one young man who made us feel a touch uncomfortable, so we didn’t want to stay TOO long.) 

Sarah with the tiniest goat in history

Tags: Bangladesh, Jessore, Khulna, Llew Bardecki, Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Bangladesh, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.