Country Archives: Bangladesh

Early start again. Today’s main goal was to visit a degree confluence, 23N91E. It is located between the cities of Chandpur and Noakhali in more or less uncharted, but certainly not uninhabited area.

I closed in on the confluence’s area by cycling through a couple of towns, Farudganj, Ramganj, and Chatkhil, and learned a little more about Bengali pronunciation. The -ganj ending, for example, is pronounced more like -munj.

I left the main road and cycled into a village (I don’t know it’s name) towards the confluence. And oh my god, I am indebted to The Confluence Project for making me go there. I have never in my life seen anything so beautiful as this village. Imagine uncharted paths, some wide enough for a car, some just wide enough for one person, lined with palm trees, winding their way between rice fields and houses. With the friendliest of people walking those paths, or washing themselves in the reservoir ponds between the houses, or working in the fields. Occasionally a cycle rickshaw or auto rickshaw (called CNG here) speeds past.

I was invited for lunch and unfortunately declined, as I didn’t know how long it would take me to find the confluence and reach the next city to find a place to sleep.

The closest I got to the confluence was 57 meters, with an error of 14 meters. I took the required pictures to submit to The Degree Confluence Project later. This confluence had been visited before, by a group of Bangladeshis, which is why I didn’t wade through the rice field it was located in to get any closer.

I reached Noakhali around 4pm. There was some confusion as to the name of the city. My paper map calls it Noakhali and I kept asking for it by that name. However, the locals kept talking about a Noakhali district and apparently weren’t familiar with a city of that name.

Cycled: 94km

Chandpur - Noakhali

I started the day early and left Dhaka’s colorful chaos to the southeast on the country’s main highway, the Dhaka-Chittagong-Highway. Traffic was heavy, but that didn’t affect me much except for the dust all the busses and trucks and CNGs stirred up.

My first stop was in Sonargoan, which is a guide book-recommended sight, a kind of mansion from the Mughal era. It was a tad disappointing as not much was there to see. The (seemingly) one old building was still being restored, yet I had to pay the full entrance fee. By the way, just like in Dhaka, the official fee for foreigners is ten times that of locals, which I find ok (it’s still very cheap). I met Fahad and a bunch of his collegues there, who spoke some English.

A little while later I turned off the highway to find a way through somewhat uncharted rural areas to Chandpur, a port city at the Meghna river. The Meghna and the Brahmaputra rivers join in Chandpur district, kind of. Bangladeshi rivers usually are made up of many tributaries and split up in many distributaries. So what joins with the Meghna in Chandpur district is the Jamuna river, the main distributary of the Brahmaputra.

Before reaching Chandpur, though, I cycled through lovely villages. People were very friendly and helpful, and pointed me in the right direction. I sometimes found it difficult to make myself understood, however. I have to work on my pronounciation of Bengali words (place names in this case), which is not always straight forward.

The countryside is generally flat. That is, there are no hills at all (with the exception of the eastern border areas with India and Burma/Myanmar, but that’s a different story). Villages span across a large area and consist of many reservoir ponds and rice paddies interspersed with houses and yards. The roads are more track-like and – not surprisingly – not always paved. Traffic is refreshingly low and cycling through these rural areas is very pleasant.

I had to cycle on dams between flooded rice fields, and cross rivers on narrow bamboo bridges and with row boats. Great stuff.

Cycled: 104km

Dhaka - Chandpur

I woke up quite early and left the hotel around 8:30am, taking the bike and heading for the city. There were only a few things I definitely wanted to see: the National Museum and Sadarghat, Dhaka’s main ferry terminal.

Dhaka’s traffic can be called ‘heavy’ at best. There are millions of bicycles, cycle rickshaws, motorbikes, CNGs (three-wheeled autorickshaws), cars, and busses in the streets, plus pedestrians and three-wheeled cargo bicycles. The streets are almost always busy and traffic jams are a common thing. The driving is … colourful and unpredictable. Brake lights usually don’t work, and neither do indicator lights. Everyone can, and will, stop (almost anywhere on the road) at any time. But cycling here is actually fun, provided one has had their morning coffee and is fully awake.

I had just been strolling around Sadarghat for like 5 minutes when I was found by Jiewell (pronounced like Joel). He suggested a boat tour on the river. I was hesitant at first, as I suspected a scam of sorts. Eventually I agreed, though, not without haggling the price down a little bit. He revealed that he owned 5 of the boats used by people to cross the river between Old Dhaka and South Dhaka. We were in one of his boats. The boats are made of wood, maybe 4 or 5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide.

On the river, Jiewell revealed that he was also a tourist guide and offered to show me around. South Dhaka first, to see “real local life”, and then the most important sights of Dhaka. The look into South Dhaka’s life and work was indeed amazing. People were amazingly friendly and happy to show what they were working on. I also liked the ‘life on the river’ and the ferries at Sadarghat. They are massive. The other sights, e.g. the National Museum, a mosque, the national Hindu temple, were not so impressive.

Needless to say I got ripped of in the end and (voluntarily – sigh) paid him more than what would have been appropriate.

Armenian church

The flight to Dubai was quite comfortable. DXB is ridiculously massive, though. The flight from Dubai to Dhaka was delayed because “the weather was a little less than what we need to land”, according to the captain. We eventually departed almost 3 hours late. When landing at 10:30am I understood what he was talking about, Dhaka was covered in dense fog. Or was it smog?

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Bangladeshi embassy in Berlin to apply for a visa. I was told that no one would want to stay for such a long time in Bangladesh (I applied for 90 days, which is supposed to be the maximum for a tourist visa), and my application was not even accepted.

Now at Dhaka airport I received a 30-day visa-on-arrival without any problems. My bike’s box, however, had been treated horribly, but luckily the bike itself was perfectly ok. I put it together under the watchful eyes of 2 kids, and cycled into the mayhem that is Dhaka’s traffic, feeling very happy, curious and tired.

My first stop was in Dhaka’s Gulshan area at a book shop, where I bought paper maps of Dhaka and Bangladesh, before I checked into the first hotel I came across in the early afternoon.

This trip is going to be slightly different from previous ones. I didn’t bring tent or mattress or cooking utensils and am traveling very light. That is, I only brought my frame bag and a 30-litre backpack which will be strapped to the bike’s rack.

I went out to look for some food, when I was chatted up by a guy who turned out to be gay. That itself wasn’t a problem, of course, but he kept hitting on me which got annoying quite quickly. It was interesting nonetheless, as he told me for example that the gay community is quite large in Bangladesh (“pretty much everyone is gay in Bangladesh” – I would think that’s a wee bit exaggerated?) as it is easier to meet with men than with women. And he showed me a ‘safe’ restaurant.