Days 17-19 - DHAKA, BANGLADESH “The Riot of Life”13-15 May. The idea to embark on a visit to Banglad

Days 17-19 - DHAKA, BANGLADESH “The Riot of Life”13-15 May. The idea to embark on a visit to Bangladesh is one that seldom crosses the mind of wary travellers. Eclipsed by its neighbours in South and Southeast Asia you normally seem to need a special reason to come here. At least the people I have spoken to have always probed me to give a reason - heck, even the immigration officer at the border would later ask the same question! And with an extra visa involved costing around £70 it doesn’t come cheap either. Well those who know me well enough know that I value knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and so it is as much with an open and enquiring mind that I myself venture to these parts as much as any other. But like Kolkata I also share a desire to challenge perceptions of a region too easily characterised by sob stories about poverty, or in Bangladesh’s case tales of flooding. Surely in 2014 a country such as this has made some material progress? As I have related in a previous chapter, Dhaka is connected to Kolkata by the biweekly train Maitree (‘friendship’) Express. Having secured my ticket a few days earlier it was an early morning 6:00 am taxi journey to the train station located in the north of the city. After going through 3 separate security checks I found my seat and settled in. It was not long however before someone asked if I could move seat. This seems to happen to me far too often in India as I am a solo traveller. I dislike moving not least because I seem to find myself in less desirable seating. In this instance the seat I was moved to appeared to have a tilt on it. Perfect. There is nothing quite as satisfying as leaning on a bearded man.The train journey itself was not too bad. Without air conditioning it was a little sticky but mildly tolerable. Immigration was horrendous though, not because I was denied entry or anything like that, but because of the maddeningly convoluted, raucous, time-consuming nature of it all. As India undertakes an exit check, and Bangladesh undertakes an entry check, the whole madness was multiplied twice over. People were pushing and shoving, ramming luggage trolleys into people’s feet, yelling, fighting, all to go to the immigration desk. Someone told me he wanted to go in front of me. What was the rush I asked him, the train wasn’t going to leave without us. I felt like I had told him something revolutionary as he didn’t have a response.As we travelled through Bangladesh its beauty became clear. As I would later discover Bangladesh’s true riches lie in the rural areas outside of Dhaka which retain the rustic character which we have been so accustomed to seeing in pictures. Rolling plains of rice plantations and irrigation networks cover the surface. Families live in clusters, like hamlets. The children seemed happy in their simple amusements; but I did see a good many children working, one even running a stall! I tried to catch these scenes on camera but I was to be denied again by the speed of the train. I felt however I had already achieved something on this trip to Bangladesh.We arrived in Dhaka to a beautiful red sunset. I had seemingly covered both the green and red of Bangladesh’s flag in one day. I was fortunate to be staying with a former colleague of mine, Shireen, who was currently in Bangladesh with her partner, a diplomat attached to the British High Commission in Dhaka. Britain is currently the biggest donor to Bangladesh, so there is important work happening here. Shireen’s place is positioned in the affluent end of Bangladesh (Gulshan). I felt privileged as I had suddenly seen an upgrade to my standard of living!Shireen kindly served dinner of an Iranian dish with chicken. This was the finest chicken I had tasted on my travels so far. As she revealed, this was chicken farmed to western standards, and evidentially was quite poplar with expats and increasingly locals. I was pleased to hear of a small revolution underway.As it had been a long day I retired early to bed, set for the next day’s sightseeing.Shireen kindly gave me access to her driver Ali for the whole of the next day, which was so very useful. Dhaka is home to 7 million people and is one of the biggest cities I have visited outside of the West. As we were located in the far north of the city it would take some time to get to the bottom which is where the old city is located.As I would discover when travelling through the city, traffic is a major issue which is on another scale here. I am used to the tooting of rickshaws, and the general anarchy of driving through the cities from my time in India. However in Dhaka the volume of vehicles makes a big difference. I have just read that on any one day there are up to 400,000 cycle rickshaws on the roads. It is clear that the city could benefit from a similar metro system to the one I had seen in Kolkata, to create some slack in the system. Even this may not however be enough.Through Dhaka’s stifling heat we were eventually able to reach a good number of destinations. We passed by the concrete (brutalist?) Dhaka parliament by Louis Kahn, which had a distinct presence. I would go for a tour of the building properly the next day. This was followed by a visit to New Market, which had been recommended to me by a chap on the train from Kolkata. At first I didn’t think there was much to this market. It seemed only to be selling clothes and some books. However I later realised that this was just one corner of a very big complex. There must have been at least 1,000 stalls here, many stationed inside the centre building. Everything you could think of was being sold: kitchen appliances, food, wares, stationary etc. I was most intrigued by the slaughter market where animals were kept at the back ready for the chop, then sold. There were also fish, still jumping in the air. It was at this point that I desperately wanted to get my camera out; but I was currently enjoying the ability to wander relatively incognito, my skin colour being the perfect disguise. This was a place where you would find no tourists, and I didn’t want to break my cover. I was making excuses though and should have allowed my intrepid desires to have the better of me. It was not the first time I had hesitated at taking photographs in South Asia. I had to remind myself that 10 seconds of awkwardness would be a lifetime’s memories.We then moved on to Lal Bagh, an incomplete palace build under the Mughals. The grounds were well maintained with plants and lawns, and made for a nice stroll. The place was popular with couples, with many holdings hands (unusual in South Asia), relaxing together openly on the grass. It made for a relaxing visit. This was followed by a short boat ride on the river. This involved paying a local guy at the harbour edge to take me on his fishing boat for 170 takka (£1.30).After seeing a monument to Bangladesh’s uprising against West Pakistan (Bangladesh was once part of Pakistan and known as East Pakistan), Shaheed Minar, I concluded the day’s sightseeing at the Bangladesh National Museum. It was one of the best maintained museums I have seen in a long time, proudly and comprehensively exploring the tribes and cultures of Bangladesh, displaying high quality and well maintained artefacts, with good quality accompanying notes. The highlight was the floor dedicated to Bangladesh’s independence struggle, as it explained well the circumstances leading to, and the fallout resulting from, the war. I was not aware that the Nixon administration supported West Pakistan’s continuing slaughter of Bangladeshis.I concluded the evening’s activities at the clubhouse in the British High Commission. As there was a quiz night we had fun as well as food. Naturally our team won. Ha! However I was curious about how much the people in this very closed circle of expats interacted with local Bangladeshis, spending their time en masse, as it seemed, in a club within the High Commission, which also housed swimming and tennis facilities. It appears that many don’t, and I found that rather sad. I wondered whether the diplomatic staff would not benefit from assimilating with Bangladeshi locals, rather than keeping to what’s comfortable and most home-like. This is how we win hearts and minds.For my last day in Bangladesh I would have to venture into the city without a driver (the previous day’s activities had taken its toll on the car. In this part of the world the temperatures are upwards of 40 degrees and it is common for cars to overheat). This suited me well as I was committed to get down with the locals and to explore the area.Unfortunately I had a less than auspicious start. Without local currency I had to venture out to find a foreign exchange. As Dhaka is not a tourist hotspot this would not be a straightforward process. I waited in the queue at a bank for about ½ hour, only to be told I had to be a customer to exchange money. Drat. Luckily the manager was helpful and got the money exchanged somewhere for me, but I had now burned an hour of valuable time.As the traffic in Dhaka is so bad, if doesn’t make sense to get a rickshaw unless the distance is sufficiently short. So I spent a good half hour or so walking before finally getting a rickshaw ride to the Bangladesh parliament for a tour. The building was designed by famed architect Louis Kahn, and was a winner of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1989. The Bangladeshis are ill prepared for tourism, and while they had someone who could take me round it was not after a lot of waiting, being sent from pillar to post. Unfortunately photography is prohibited inside the building so I could not capture this unique concrete building in all its splendour, but you can see some shots of the interior here: http://sarahkrasley.com/why-yes-those-are-pictures-from-the-time-i-toured-the-interior-of-the-bangladesh-national-parliament-building.html. When I visited the library I came across many an old book, many I would find interesting, but hardly any new ones. I asked the tour guide how often the politicians actually use the library. Not very often he replied. I was hardly surprised.After briefly pausing for lunch at a nice riverside stop, I caught another rickshaw to travel to the ‘pink palace’ in the old city. Again the traffic was horrendous and my attempts to reach the building in time were a long shot. On the way there my auto-rickshaw driver seemed to hit, or at least clashed with, a neighbouring cycle rickshaw. The passenger gave out a scream, but my rickshaw driver, either out of a sense of culpability or from a desire not to have to get into a confrontation sped off with a smile on his face. The other rickshaw appeared to be jammed. Poor guy. I am not surprised that this happened however, as the traffic is simply unmanageable. I had also earlier seen two instances where rickshaw drivers had clashed and entered into fisticuffs. All in the space of two days!I did not make it in time to the Pink Palace. In fact it transpired that it was not even open that day (a weekday)! Another of the irregular things which is clearly tourist-unfriendly. However, I did manage to visit the neighbouring set of streets, beginning with the so-called ‘Hindu Street’, which were one of the most interesting experiences for me. I had told myself that I had to shrug off my fear of photographing locals and just go for it. And so I did. I was pleased to capture some very busy streets and action shots. I also managed to find a slaughter market and capture similar scenes to the ones I had so wished to capture in New Market the previous day. As I made my way back towards home, I saw yet more streets lined with stalls. I was overwhelmed at the scale of the operation here which led me to think this might well be the bazaar capital of South Asia. The leather shoe market was particularly impressive, with some fine looking specimens on display.The rickshaw journey back to the apartment was long, made longer again by a traffic jam. My driver used his skills however to drive down side roads, and even the wrong side of the road, to bypass the mayhem.After a final quick supper at Casa Shireen it was off to the airport to start my two month journey in South East Asia, starting in Vietnam. At the airport I met a Filipino who had just finished a power plant project in Bangladesh. He told me corruption was rife amongst the police when it came to receiving backhanders and payments. No surprise there, but intriguing nonetheless to hear it firsthand. Alas the Bangladesh adventure was over: but the fight for Middle Earth had just begun (I know it doesn’t make sense). -- source link

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