The End of B*Desh

DAYS 6 & 7: The End

Damn that coconut. Or one of my other indiscretions. I spent the whole night evacuating everything I've eaten thus far in every way my body knows how. We "woke up" at seven, myself completely empty and Imran (I now learn that I've had his name wrong from the beginning) with a migraine and lacking sleep as well, presumably from my symphonic indigestion.

We took a CNG to the anti-climactic Lawachara rain forest. Deep in past the tea and rubber plantations was a national park that promised primates, parrots, and panthers. Instead, it delivered little more than a bird that looked like a robin, a black squirrel, and an empty potato chip bag. There was, however, a rather soothing "rain" effect. The trees kept the temperature of the area low enough to form mist in the morning, so for the first couple hours of the day one could hear the dew falling from leaf to leaf.

On the way out we stopped at a pineapple field, where I picked my very own pineapple. We cut it up for lunch, though I could hardly enjoy it. After that, we started the long journey back to Dhaka. Imran insisted on trying to feed me or talk about the food we had eaten that could have led to my present condition. It did not help.

I drank a Sprite on the ride home, hoping the carbonation would be settling.

I slept delusionally but felt healthy in the morning. I hungrily ate the leftover nan I had been hording and got ready to return to Korea. The airport was more crowded than when I had arrived, masses of people huddled around the entrance to meet relatives returning from years abroad.

After an hour on the ground (there are only 4 other flights leaving Dhaka. This city is inexcusably disorganized.), I and the 4 infants surrounding me depart for our Bangkok layover. Who would've though I could have finished a 400 page novel already? This was a long flight with nothing but Thai folk songs and opera on the radio and E Inside Bollyywood on TV. Suvarnabhumi airport has even less to offer the traveler with 5 hours on his hands. It's good to be back home, where my bed is familiar and I recognize the pop music.

Thailand is so thoughtful. This would be weird in the states.

EPILOGUE
My overall feeling is emboldened, despite the freshness of the memory of illness. I took risks and survived, which is nothing short of courage boosting. Contrarily, I have also been reminded that not all places outside America would be modern and comfortable. Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong had lulled me into thinking that all foreign locales would be air conditioned and accessible, an illusion which Bangladesh quickly shattered. It will be quite some time before I venture as far off the beaten path as this again, of this I feel confident. Although, with every new trip my appetite for exploration is deepened rather than sated. I still am unsure of what new direction my adventure may lead me, but I am ever open to the challenge. I leave you with an outtakes of sorts.

The 10 Facts about B*Desh that Didn't Fit into the Stream of My Story

10. The #1 (and only recorded) hair/beard dye color of choice: Henna Orange
9. Only American song heard: You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift
8. Strangest Deformity: The man whose right arm couldn't grow muscles. No, the cab driver who had a third thumb. No! The guy at the park with a second nose in the middle of his forehead!!! I can't pick!
7. National Sport: Cricket. This is a very confusing sport.
6. The Best Car Seen: Mazda RX8 (shiny!)
5. The 2nd Best Car Seen: Toyota Corolla (it had both rear-view mirrors)
4. Most Interesting Thing Learned: Though we derive our number system from Arabic numerals, the look nothing alike.
3. Most Ridiculous Thing Seen: A cow giving birth in the street.
2. Saddest Beggar Ever: The 3 toddlers, each with their hair in pigtails and babies on their hips, followed by a toothless, one-eyed mother.
1. Most Dangerous Road Stunt: Our bus was passing two other buses on a two lane road. An oncoming CNG went all the way around the buses we were passing (off the shoulder of oncoming traffic's side of the road) to avoid being hit by our bus.

Into Hindustan

DAY 5: Sri Mongol

My honeymoon period of regularity ends as the food gets the best of me at last. I suppose garbanzo bean soup from a street vendor was simply asking for it. Although I had it coming, it can't be said that my condition made the following 3 hour bus journey comfortable for any party involved. It's also not discouraged me from another food packed day. You only live once, right?

At noon we arrived in Sri Mongol, a town that approaches the Indian border from another side. Sri Mongol is distinct from other places I've been so far in that it demonstrates an inversion of the typical 80% Muslim 15% Hindu makeup.

Lunch is rice with curried green beans and a fish fillet from something Imlan calls rui. Afterwards we enjoy a pastry, if that's what it can be called. Jilapi is batter, spiraled into fry oil and cooked, then marinated in honey. Not only is it covered in the orange-pink hued honey but the goo has seeped its way into the pockets created within the fried batter coils. It's the shovel for honey that french fries are for ketchup.

Our motorized rickshaw, or CNG (#6), took us into the Finlay tea fields. Imlan and I strode through the bushes and streams with a raw tea leaf in our front gum like it was chew tobacco. Unlike tobacco, the spit can be swallowed since you're only really making tea in your mouth. Even after fully removing all the bits of leaf, my mouth was still (quite literally) steeped in tea flavor.

We watched for cobras at all times, even when we passed out of the tea bushes and into the rubber tree fields. I observed what looked like watery Elmer's glue snaking down the carved trenches in the tree bark and dripping into collection cups. We finally reached an outpost at which I could drink some of this tea, having been comically layered liked a specialty alcoholic drink, black on white on red on oolong on green.

Later in the day, we rickshawed around the city area, me with coconut in hand. A local boy had hacked it open and popped in a straw. I sipped on coconut milk as Imlan and I strolled through a Hindu temple. On our way back into town we got the same boy to sever in two my then empty coconut. I scraped the minimal "meat" and ate it with part of the shell. It was like ectoplasm, but I finished it politely.

To be continued tomorrow...

To the Edge and Back

DAY 4: Jaflong

We had traditional Bangladeshi breakfast of parata (like a pancake and a croissant's edible baby!) and a marinated, diced potato dish. So, "pancroint" and home-style hash browns, with the Queen's beverage of course. After our breakfast, we went outside the hotel to take a car to Jaflong.

The car we hired was speeding down a two lane road to Hindi techno, weaving through buses, "lorries," other cars, rickshaws, motorized rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, livestock, and roadkill. As we passed a military college and base, the driver cut through the parking lot to avoid some speed bumps. Unfortunately, the other side of the dirt lot ended in an unforeseen two foot drop, and before you could say "foursyllableromel," we were stuck.

If only I had my camera for these pictures it would have been AWESOME. Foreign problem solving in action is always legendary. Unfortunately, we bought some Bangladeshi batteries yesterday and they got my camera up and running enough to take three pictures of the tandoori before the piddly things petered out, so words alone will have to suffice.

Plan 1: We spun out the suspended wheels of the Corolla for a few minutes.
Plan 2: We pushed on the front of the car while spinning out the suspended wheels of the Corolla for a few minutes.
Plan 3: (By now, locals are gathering.) Lance Corporal Tahel explains that this has happened to him before. We jack up the car (Sub Plan 1: From a point just in front of the back left tire. Sub Plan 2: From a point just in front of the front left tire.), then take stray rocks and bricks to build a mini wall under the tires. Once they have traction, drive backwards back into the parking lot.
Plan 4: After the car blows rocks all over the place, utilize the 20 some odd people around you and the just push the car back up and into the lot. Do not use for leverage the plastic bumper which is affixed by three distant screws.

We finally arrive in Jaintiapur, though with significantly less Hindi techno. Jaintiapur is just a few kilos outside of Jaflong. There are mountains in the distance that jut up suddenly out of the infinite rice fields. We wander through the town, observing the ruins of old structures such as the mayor's house and the building where the magistrate would preside over prisoner executions (After the car fiasco I made Imlan buy me batteries that didn't expire in seventies, so I'm back in action).

We pressed on to Tamabil Zero Point, the border crossing between Bangladesh and India. The illusion of the land jumping up unexpectedly like a cardiogram is only further proven the closer we come. The range is 7 rows of mountains deep, says Imlan, and it marks the border. We could see India and a border town from across the checkpoint. People were crossing and trading. We ate a handful of seasoned dates from a small newspaper clipping. They had been tossed in salt, diced peppers, and cilantro, yet under all that they tasted like raisins. They proved a bizarre but somehow appealing snack.

Just beyond the border crossing were a few kilometers of coal...I don't quite know what to call them. The coal is all within the mountains and therefore in Indian territory, but Bangladesh imports a good deal of it. So it piles up just inside the border and waits to be sent throughout the rest of the country. So, coal redistribution centers? That sounds way more formal than it was though. Coal redistribution mounds.

At last we pressed on to Jaflong itself. The "town" was little more than a dirt road fringed with rows concrete huts for selling shoes and soda. At the end of the road was a river. People were lined up waiting for unromantic gondolas to ferry them to the far bank, along with their families, motorbikes, and bags of sugar and concrete. On the other side of the river was a deep and wide field of tea plants, amongst which were staggered palms for shading them.

Beyond the tea plantation was a forest. We took a rickshaw down through the forest, stopping to inspect the papaya, banana, orange, and betel plants. Local people lived in small houses within the forest, gathering the fruits and nuts for some small income.

Further up the river was the town of Bholla Gart. It was a bustling market along the banks. People were pulling large stones from out of the river, selling stone crafts like cookware and jewelry, and crowding around shuttle boats so they could shop on the opposite bank. We snacked again, this time on sliced star fruit. It was prepared just like the dates, so again sweet, spicy, salty, and soapy all at once. First it tastes like Cajun popcorn, then like apples. Strange.

Our lunch was pancroint, curry chicken, and omelet, then we rode back to the outskirts of Sylhet. It was there that we saw our third tomb, that of Hazrat Shah Paran, the sister son of Shahjalal whom we'd seen yesterday. Again, there was a large crowd of devotees, come to climb up to the top of the hillock and pray over the saint's casket which lay draped under colorful fabric and roofed by tree branches. After their prayer, many people would sling water onto the casket from whatever water bottles they had with them, though to what end I can only guess. This time when we left the shrine and descended the stairs, we walked down backwards like the rest of the crowd, so as not to put our back disrespectfully to the saint.

We had a more substantial snack of chapati, a curry flavored garbanzo soup with 6 spices, fresh veggies raw and sliced, crackers of sorts, and chunked boiled egg. Street food, my fourth disobedience. Chapati comes along with something like homefries, which are made from a grain called dal.

We rested for a few hours while I wrote of today's events. We have just now taken out dinner of piles upon piles of nan, chicken with curry vegetables, and beef kurai, a beef'n'veggie stir fry. There's a lovely accompanying "salad" of sliced cucumbers with lime juice. A winning combination. To top it all off, we went around the corner to a confectionery for Imlan'a favorite, doi. It was like lemon meringue pie filling stirred together with cream cheese frosting. Rich!

• healthy
• Up to 16 whities (I saw 8 backpackers crossing the border into India)
• Oh yeah, I drank water from a pitcher while we ate street food. #5.

To be continued tomorrow...

Outside of Dhaka

DAY 3: Sylhet

I'm awoken by a menagerie of bird noises and something that sounds like Bollywood. I eat my organic bananas and oranges for breakfast then board a taxi with Imlan, my guide for the rest of the week, and Mr. Milan, the hotel owner. On the drive he tries to explain his country's history to me, but I find it hard to concentrate on stories of independence and unity while literally watching a dog being run over and a blind man beginning for food.

[Because all of today went unphotographed, today I present the miscellaneous collections]
TRANSPORT

We get on the bus for the trip to Sylhet, a city in the northeast. For the duration of our 5 hour bus ride my camera was out of commission. So, what I witnessed:

• All around us are miles and miles of rice fields embroidered with rivers and ponds, smattered with various livestock.
• Women carry laundry and fruit in baskets on their heads.
• Occasionally, the tall smoke stack of a brick kiln and its surrounding rows of bricks rises over the trees.
• Two young boys bathe a cow.
• A mujaheddin scarecrow guards some crops (I imagine the Wizard's witty solution to If I only had DEATH TO AMERICA)
• Rice is baking in shallow piles on large concrete slabs.
• We pass a mosque whose four story minaret was completely ensconced in bamboo scaffolding.
• Every few miles another billboard for concrete slides past.

On the bus with us was Bangladeshi folk star Pothik Nobi (above). He had dreadlocks and blue eyeshadow.

After we arrived, Imlan and I took a local bus (disobedience #3) into the city proper to our hotel. After checking into Hotel Supreme (Service with Smile), we had a late lunch of beef biriyani. This was the beginning of a whole 24 hours of "WHERE IS MY CAMERA?!?!?!" moments. Damn foreign batteries.

After eating we visited the coffin of Hazrat Shah Jalal al-Mujarrad, one of people credited with bringing Islam to the colonial Indian territories 500 years ago. The mayor of Sylhet some years back made it law that everyone pay their respects to this man upon first arriving in the city. Even Hindus gladly oblige seeing as how Shah Jalal provided the whole city with a wealth of charitable services.

FOLIAGE

We visited a second tomb, this of another man who accompanied Shah Jalal from Yemen to the region. Chashni Pir Saab had a pet monkey in life, and after his death that monkey began multiplying. Supposedly the ancestors of this monkey are those that populated the hill on which his coffin rests. It was a small, grey variety of monkey, and we watched 7 or 8 baby ones wrestling in the trees before we rickshawed onward.

Afterwards we visited a local Hindu temple. Some friendly temple employees explained some of the statues as well as some of the basic tenets of the religion. Some of the statues were hundreds of years old and had been discovered when an area building was demolished and the land excavated. The monks themselves had repainted and adopted them. The men offered Imlan and I some famous Bangladeshi sweets. One tasted like brown sugar having been condensed by honey. Thankfully the other one was sweeter.

CURRENCY

Sylhet is nicer than Dhaka on a whole. It is neither overcrowded nor as dusty. At about 4 pm in Dhaka, a misty fog settles over everything, making it impossible to see the sun and thus effectively ending the day, but not here. The city is far shorter and there are more trees. It still suffers from the same dim, orange glow from the terrible lighting.

Imlan and I rickshawed on to the restaurant where we'd had lunch for a quick dinner. We ate a chicken and a half between the two of us. It was grilled in a tandoori rub, the nan was fresh and baked in house, and it all came with a powerful garlic-raw onion-mustard seed dipping sauce that was inexplicably green. I am now so full and ready to pass out.

• healthy
• continent
• 6 whites, 3 Chinese, innumerable goats

To be continued tomorrow...