Please come join me on by epic odyssey through former East Pakistan, now known to us all as Bangladesh. 17 days, 4438 snaps.
Now, 12 months later I can, as I am editing and writing, state categorically.... ......The best road trip I have ever taken.
FCDO advises against all but essential travel to parts of Bangladesh.
"Fuck the nanny state", we all agreed. There were six of us, new found friends, world travellers, sufferers of chronic wanderlust, like minded baby Boomers living life to the full. Anyways when needed, we had an armed guard. Well I say armed guard he was just some bloke in a uniform with a 12 bore shotgun.
I arrived in Dhaka, the capital city a day early, so I could wander on my own and soak it up. I had a plan.
My arrival into the country didn't start very well, "Visa on arrival" the blurb said, apparently all done in a matter of minutes.
So first you fill in a form, then you join a queue to pay for said visa, then you join another queue to have documents checked and visa issued.
Five potential customs desks, only two open. I always pick the wrong queue be it supermarkets, post offices or fucking Visa on arrival queues. So jumping onto the shortest queue what could go wrong? EVERYTHING,
As when the bloke in front of me got to the desk he called over his fucking family. That made 5 of them. Him his wife and three kids, typical middle class "Hey look at us taking our three under ten years old kids out of school to travel Asia man, all dressed in our tie dyed garments, don't we look super cool"
No Tristan and Francesca or Julian and Skyblue Moon, what ever your stupid names are you are not cool you are a bunch of twats.
40 minutes yes 40 minutes to get them through the visa process. Start to finish for me,"visa on arrival"? just under an hour and a half!
By which time the baggage carousel had emptied and I spent the next 20 minutes hunting down my suitcase. Found,
Of course my pre arranged taxi had fucked off. No data roaming, and of course as I had left the arrivals lounge the armed guards wouldn't let me back in.
Wandering around trying to engage with one of them if they could speak English all the while being pestered by hands out beggars and the like.
Brilliant, eventually found a man with a rifle who spoke English, had a phone and sorted it all out for me. Hotel taxi on its way. I hope he enjoyed spending the $20 I offered which in fairness he didn't want but eventually accepted.
Ya know what? I love, no I really fucking love travelling.
So the plan: I wanted to visit an old graveyard I had managed to find online, located in a suburb called Wari. It was allegedly only a 50 minute walk from my hotel, following a main highway.
But we don't want to do that. I wander, I get side tracked, I follow the lens and without wi-fi, just a paper map and my own intuition anything could happen?
I didn't get lost, mugged or murdered obviously.
I found and enjoyed walking with the dead and returned to my hotel.
C'mon, walk with me.
We are going to see a lot of people, a lot of street life, a riot of humanity, colour and atmosphere. Trust me this is like Dehli's Chandi Chowk on steroids!
First class bus travel anyone?
Dhaka, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. a mega-city with an estimated population of just over 10 million, which rises to 24 million over the Dhaka metropolitan area. The eighth most densely populated city in the world. It is also the largest Bengali speaking city
Flyovers and underpasses
Would you like to be an electrical engineer with a maze of cables like that? I wonder how many illegal tap ins there are.
The stroll took me through differing environments , busy traffic filled highways to narrow alleyways, turning every corner looking left looking right there was so much to see
The greengrocer
The pot washers
The hairdresser
The men outside the mosque, no room inside.
The girl in the window
The sun sets early in these parts, it gets dark very quickly, but life goes on, the sellers sell, the beggars beg, and the old boy with a camera snaps away, as this path will never be trodden again.
I kinda guess it is the burning question on everyones lips:
NO!
I did not get the runny bum syndrome at all on the trip
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