If I had not yet fully earned my stripes as a traveler, all doubts can officially be laid to rest after my visit to Bangladesh. Words don't exist to describe the overwhelming nature of that country, but here are a few that stick out: chaotic, loud, over-crowded, hot, beautiful, confusing, frustrating, dangerous, and strange. Honestly, every one of those adjectives is a gross understatement of what it actually feels like to be a Westerner traveling in Bangladesh.
We arrived in Dhaka, the choked capital city, and promptly booked a room in the sweaty, disorienting Old Dhaka. The first thing you notice about the country is its crippling heat. At over 100 degrees, you begin sweating immediately upon stepping out of the airport. The second thing you notice? The traffic. I have never seen such insanity on the roads. One guy on our flight told us: "You spend four days in Dhaka, three will be spent in traffic." Between pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, cars, motorcycles, buses, and trucks, the roads are constantly gridlocked, yet they somehow move, because an accident seems imminent every couple of seconds. In fact, 32 people die every day on the buses in Bangladesh. After riding on a few of these death trap buses, I'm actually surprised that statistic isn't higher. The Bangladeshi drivers allow for zero wasted space on the roads. In practice, this means that it's not uncommon for an enormous bus to pass a truck full of construction equipment on a two-lane road in the middle of a curve at night as the headlights of oncoming traffic grow disconcertingly larger--all while a motorcycle or two gets elbowed onto the shoulder of the street.
The third thing you notice are the people. Bangladesh does not get a lot of tourists at all. In my first week in the country, I only saw one other Westerner. However, I'm not even sure that she was a Westerner: it was dark, I was walking quickly, and I think I might have been hallucinating from the heat. Even giving her the benefit of the doubt, catching a glimpse of one solitary Westerner in a week is absurdly low. That means that, as Mike and I walked down any given street, we stood out like sore thumbs, and the people of Bangladesh were quite curious and took an overzealous amount of interest in us. It was all friendly—certainly not malicious in the least. Many people showed us around for free, helped us get where we needed to be when the public transit failed us, and wanted to have conversations. They were all very kind, but it gets tiring having to constantly entertain a mob of people who want to shake your hand and exchange contact information.
Walking through the streets of Old Dhaka is like being in a video game obstacle course. There are people EVERYWHERE. You constantly have to keep an eye on the sidewalk, as you might step into one of the weak spots and fall into the mucky sewage. Beware of the large sheets of metal being hauled in and out of storefronts, as they often come dangerously close to ramming into heads. Meanwhile, make sure you don't get your toes run over by the bicycle rickshaws that turn reckless corners. Furthermore, there are usually some (admittedly tragic and heartbreaking) beggars crawling on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, nobody speaks English, which is rare no matter where you are in the world. For a soundtrack, there are car horns and blaring South Asian music, usually with the abrasive sound of somebody sawing through wood somewhere. None of these things may seem insurmountable—after all, I suppose I did make it out of Old Dhaka alive. However, when those things are experienced together in such oppressively hot temperatures, it feels as though your senses are getting the shit kicked out of them. Indeed, Bangladesh successfully blew all of my circuits, and I am still trying to reboot from it.
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Crazy crowds. |
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Guy on bus. |
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Family on bus, psyched to have the photo op. |
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Packing into the bus. |
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This sign was surprisingly necessary... and totally ignored. |
At one point, Mike and I wandererd into an outdoor festival, where we were promptly ushered onto a jury-rigged Ferris wheel. How can you jury rig a Ferris wheel? I don't know, but the whole thing was made of wood and rope, so I was terrified as we spun up and around on it. At another point, we got mobbed at a carnival by a bunch of kids who wanted photos and handshakes with us. A recurring character found us on the street FOUR times (on separate days) to corner us and inquire about the true nature of Powerball (yes, the American lottery). Another time, we stumbled into a Muslim religious lecture, into which we were invited. Obviously, it was in Bengali, so we had no clue what was being said. When we left, my shoes were missing, and it took the whole group of old men about 10 minutes of investigation to figure out that one of their older congregants had "borrowed" them to do his ablutions (ritual cleansing) in the outdoor showers... again, very odd. Nevertheless, he gave them back, so I didn’t have to go barefoot. Such episodes occur constantly in Bangladesh--or, at least, they did for us.
After a few days in Old Dhaka, we decided to go down south to the Khulna Division, an area of the country which Lonely Planet describes as a "frontier" brimming with adventures. We took the Rocket, a steamboat with a paddle wheel. It is supposedly the nicest boat trip in Bangladesh, and it looked like something that got picked up off the Mississippi River circa the 19th century. We had a 1st-class cabin, and the trip lasted a full 24 hours. We met a group of older business partners, and we quickly befriended them and had a great time hanging out with them for the duration of the trip. Being on that boat felt like I had a reached a new plateau in my travel experiences. The scene felt highly remote and anachronistic. It felt like a mix between being Mark Twain, a British colonial officer in India, and a character from Love in the Time of Cholera. We cruised away from the chaos of Dhaka, and within a matter of hours we were floating lazily past jungle villages that looked about as off-the-beaten-path as possible.
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Our steamboat cabin and time capsule. |
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The steamboat's dining room. |
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Our deck on the boat, with the guys we befriended admiring the view. |
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A riverside village. |
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A small port stop along the way. |
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Rowboat on the river. |
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Mike and I with two of the businessmen, who were extremely kind to us. |
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The jungle |
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An old boat... maybe shipwrecked? |
While I know that some tourists come to this area, I had the distinct feeling that I had finally found a relatively uncharted territory. Even the Lonely Planet guide was sparse on details and left something to be desired. After much confusion about the steamboat's final stop, we were ushered off the boat and had to catch a bus to Bagerhat, a small (though still chaotic) town that boasts some very old mosques.
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Our final ferry across the river to catch a bus to Bagerhat. |
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A random village where we caught the bus at sunset. |
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Shait Gumbad Mosque in Bagerhat. |
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Inside of the Shait Gumbar Mosque. |
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Another, smaller mosque nearby. |
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Mike and I, disheveled and exhausted after only 4 days in Bangladesh. |
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This guy showed us around all morning for free... very eager to hang out with us. |
Next stop: Khulna, the capital of the province. In truth, there's not much there, and we only visited in order to catch the Rocket steamboat back to Dhaka. Unfortunately, Lonely Planet was wrong about the boat route, so we ended up having to take a bus, which was quite treacherous. Much like the flight to Hillary-Norgay Airport in Lukla (for our Everest trek), I was gripping my armrests with white knuckles at certain points. Nevertheless, we made it back to Dhaka in one piece, though at times it felt like we might not.
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A market in Khulna. |
By that time, I was spent. To be honest, I had had enough of Bangladesh. I booked a hotel in Gulshan, the diplomatic district of the city. Here, I was able to sit back, rest, and wait for the Indian embassy to approve my request for a tourist visa. This district of the city was still crazy, but it was much more manageable than Old Dhaka. There were English signs, a good variety of restaurants, and far less traffic. We even saw a handful of other Westerners in this area of the city—though still not very many.
I hope I have not made Bangladesh sound too terrible in this blog. It's really not at all. As I said, the people are friendly, the jungles (outside Dhaka) are gorgeous, and—to say the least—it is a lively place to visit. If I could do it over again, I would, but for shallow reasons. I did not particularly enjoy my time in Bangladesh. It was nice, but my body and brain simply overdosed on the craziness. Nothing runs on time, so everything felt doubly frustrating on top of my already overwhelmed senses. Finally, it took the Indian embassy in Dhaka forever to get my visa (2 weeks and around 10 trips to the embassy), so I felt somewhat trapped by all of the red tape and diplomatic hoops.
But that's exactly why I am glad that I went. I will wear my experiences in Bangladesh like a badge of honor. Paraphrasing and twisting what they say of NYC: "If you can make it here (as a traveler), you can make it anywhere (as a traveler)." From India to Vietnam to Morocco, I have never seen or experienced such a carnival of chaos in my entire life. Even as I ramble in this blog entry, I am painfully aware that I really can never explain what it felt like to be there, and many of you probably just think I am venting or complaining or romanticizing (or all of the above). But Bangladesh really is a place that feels totally foreign and void of tourist traps. Short of places like Somalia, I can't think of anywhere stranger or more difficult to navigate. I take a sort of foolish pride in that. I, like many other travelers, have a strange obsession with getting off the map. It's not easy to do in this day and age. Burma certainly felt that way at times, but Bangladesh brought those feelings of adventure and alienation to a whole new level. At its core, traveling should shove us outside of our normal routine. It should rattle our patience, and it should feel frustrating at times. If I never felt those things while traveling, I probably would need to try harder to get off the beaten path and find something novel and alien. If I travel with the goal of escaping my comfort zone in hopes of finding notable experiences abroad, then Bangladesh has ensured that this journey of mine will exceed all expectations and render this trip an unquestionable success.
Bangladesh also marked the point in the journey where Mike and I split off from one another. It's been nice having a companion, and I am excited to meet up with a few people in the coming weeks, but I am eager to break out on my own as well. Surely, it will change how I experience my trip, and I look forward to it. Until then, I look forward to hearing from you.
"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."
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