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...