Bangladesh

Visited: February 2000

Duration of visit: 15 days

Capital city: Dhaka

Population: 130 million (2000)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

• Touring the most densely populated city in the world (Dhaka) on rikshaw.
• Feeling as a celebrity and calling attention of locals when I wanted to take a photo – everybody wanted to pose for me.
• Being invited to a private house for a cup of tea by local friend in Chattogram.
• Seeing shut-down Dhaka due to political turmoil.
• Bangladesh is poor; really poor.

“Visit Bangladesh before tourists!“ is the official advertising slogan of the National Tourist Board of Bangladesh, which called my attention to this forgotten country, sandwiched between India and the Bay of Bengal. Due to the proximity of popular India and Nepal, Bangladesh remains neglected and travel agencies do not mention it at all in their brochures.

Bangladesh was part of the Asian Big Tour from Australia, through Southeast Asia and China to India. During this 15-months long trip I visited most of the countries in the region and spent two weeks travelling around Bangladesh, before continuing to India overland.

Exotics, poverty and crowds of people were my expectations before the flight to the capital city Dhaka. At the Bangladeshi consulate in Bangkok, I was the only foreigner with a visa application, which was approved the next day without any noteworthy formalities.

Among the piles of all the other guidebooks for Asian countries and even for Slovenia, I searched in vain in all possible bookstores for one about Bangladesh, before I accidentally found it hidden in the warehouse of the central branch of Asia Books. My first association about Bangladesh was: “Made in Bangladesh”. Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest apparel exporter of the Western brands. Nearly 95% of export come from textiles.

The largest river delta in the world – The Bengal Delta – makes Bangladesh one of the most climate-vulnerable countries.

Floods are common in Bangladesh with 80% of the country prone to flooding, particularly during the annual monsoon season. With the continued impact of climate change it is feared that Bangladesh will disappear by the end of 21^st century.

Therefore, weather planning is extremely important. I was on my way in the right moment; in February the weather is perfect, the heat is reasonable, it doesn’t rain due to dry season.

I experience my first contact with Bangladesh at Dhaka International Airport. Despite the fact that the plane was full, only about five foreign passengers complete the customs formalities. All others are of Bangladeshi nationality, running through fast track line. At the exit, we are surrounded by moto drivers (baby taxi) and real car taxis. The result of a short negotiation is an acceptable price for everyone and, together with a bareheaded Japanese guy, I am on the way to the old part of the capital city, roughly 10 kilometers away.

Darkness covers the Bangladeshi capital; neon lights disfigure the true image of impoverished Dhaka. Vintage buses are like beasts whose noise drives fear into your bones, as the exhaust fumes clog your respiratory channel’s. The traffic jam is so severe that we spend over two hours before arriving at the designated hotel, which unfortunately fails to adhere to even the most basic standards of human hygiene.

I treat myself with a descent dinner in the nearby popular restaurant. The waiter’s suit is dirtier than the mechanic’s, and the tablecloth has turned black with age.

“There is no menu, no tourists, but we have curry, rice and chapatti!“, he rudely ignores my kind “Hello” and puts five glasses of water on the table.

Rice, pancake-like bread made only from flour and salt (chapatti), pieces of fish and cooked potatoes in an abundance of spicy curry, become my main food in the upcoming weeks. I like it, but struggle with spicy taste.

It is already late when I fall tired into bed at the third – finally chosen hotel.

The next morning, I get a real idea of ​​Dhaka. At five fifteen, the noise from the speakers mounted on the dome of a nearby mosque disturbs my sleep and awakens me. The invocation of Allah echoes from all sides, at every hour, even though prayers are officially scheduled only five times a day.

Nearing ten million inhabitants in rapid growth, Dhaka is steadily moving towards becoming one of the ten largest cities globally. I naively believed that air pollution in Bangkok was the culmination of man’s quest for self-destruction, but Dhaka is without a doubt an even better proof of this. Dhaka is the world’s most densely populated city and the country itself is one of the most densely populated in the world. Bangladesh is one of the least obese countries in the world. Poor payment is enough just to survive.

350,000 rickshaws have given Dhaka the title of rickshaw capital, and their colorfulness embodies them with a work of art.

Their drivers are among the poorest population; without a gram of fat on their tanned body, dressed in simple skirts (longyi) they transport the sublime “rich” as if they were their slaves.

The biggest enemies of rickshaws are worn out buses and omnipotent cops. The first ones, like some monsters, run through the narrow streets and often hit, thus damage the rickshaw, while policemen, with sticks in their hands, wait for careless drivers who turn into the wrong street or park in no-parking area during traffic chaos.

People stare at me as if I was from another planet, but they are far from being annoying as in some other Asian countries. I notice extremely bad conditions of houses, the accumulated rubbish in containers, side road channels or even in the middle of roads, and the lack of women on the streets.

Nine-tenths of Bangladesh’s population are Muslims who advocate the rule that a woman’s place is at home and only at home. Their only job is to take care of the kids, food on the table and a clean house. On extremely rare occasions, when they step on the street, they must cover their entire body, including their face, with a monotonous black suit, chador, to avoid calling attention of other men. Sad, boring or even exploitative?

Men do all the work (with the exception of the least dirty ones, which are destined for Hindu women of the lowest caste): they sell and buy clothes, fruits, cakes, women’s underwear, serve in restaurants, and also choose a husband for their daughters.

The lack of kindness or a smile on a face, which I found in most of Southeast Asia, evokes rudeness in me, sometimes the only way to communicate.

“Do you ever say hello to each other?” I ask an educated receptionist in my hotel.

“Usually not!” He replied lukewarmly.

“How do you say please or thank you in Bangla?”, I searched for words crucial to a genuine relationship with the locals.

”Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. In fact, we do not have these words or nobody uses them at all!”

The fact that some people are perceived and treated as inferior to others, could help explain this not so polite atmosphere in Bangladesh.

I read in the guidebook, that traveling by bus can be very dangerous due to frequent accidents. Drivers escape in the case of an accident before they can be lynched by surviving passengers. Before boarding, I take a look at the buses parked in the agency’s backyard, which fill me with fear. Just about every agency vehicle has a few patched parts and, on both sides, they are full of scratches, as if they were driving wild over bushes.

“Oh, don’t worry. These are stories from the past!”, the ticket seller reassures me.

“Drive fast, overtake all the vehicles in front of you and blow until your ears hurt!”, were the orders to the driver, who obviously forgot that he was transporting people not cargo or prisoners. Nothing has changed and all the stories about crazy drivers are true.

As soon as we leave Dhaka, the flat landscape is covered with perfectly cultivated rice fields, interrupted every few kilometers by brick factories with ovens from which thick, black smoke rolls in the air. I am filled with the feeling that thousands of people are making bricks just so that the poorest can then grind them to dust and thus earn some takas (local currency).

During the stop roughly halfway, we are surrounded by beggars, disabled and blind people. According to official statistics, Bangladesh is the third poorest country in the world. Almost 80% of the population is malnourished, 30,000 children go blind every year due to lack of adequate food and almost half of them die a year later. Every year, 20,000 children are born with psychological and mental illnesses. Nearly half a million people die each year from poor nutrition.

Education is the privilege of the wealthier; illiteracy among men over the age of 15 is 51%, while almost three quarters of women do not know the secrets of the letters. The reasons for poverty are also hidden in natural disasters and overpopulation. Bangladesh is the most populous country in the world, with the exception of city-states such as Hong Kong or Singapore. Bangladesh is three times denser populated than India and seven times than China.

I kindly ask the beggars to leave me alone during the meal and I would bring them some food later. They seem to be happy with the explanations, quietly waiting for me to finish up the meal.

We arrive in the second biggest city, Chittagong, also known as Chattogram, without casualties. My new friend Alam, a strict Muslim, invites me for a cup of tea. He introduces me to his children and brothers, while he doesn’t even mention his wife, let alone showing her. We sit in the hallway, the only room in the house where male visitors are allowed to enter.

My female travelling companion gets the honor of getting to know the interior of the residence, engages in a conversation with her older daughter and experiences a close encounter with the wife – the most mysterious treasure of any proponent of Islam.

Cox’s Bazar Beach is the longest natural sea beach in the world running 120 kilometers, but I wouldn’t compare it to exotic islands of the Philippines or Thailand.

If you are a man and you want to swim accompanied only by members of the stronger sex, then this is the right place. Constant influx of Bangladeshi to this popular beach is a guarantee that you will never be alone or in peace.

3 million people visit Cox`s Bazar every year. Groups of men would like to take a photo of you, a photo with you, a photo of them and you, a photo with you in the background, a photo of their friends and you, etc. I didn’t like all this attention. I can’t imagine how disturbing it would be for a woman … even if swimming completely covered in chador.

The train ride to Sylhet is significantly less stressful than riding a bus; vendors, beggars and casual admirers make sure it’s never boring. In the newspaper I find news of the start of a strike by the opposition protesting against the adoption of certain laws and demanding the immediate calling of parliamentary elections.

It sounds familiar, but I still ask a local friend how this situation impacts day to day life in Bangladesh:

“Hartal – the general deadlock in the city will continue for 4 days!“, explains a man in good English.

“What about buses, trains and rickshaws?”

“Forget it! You will be able to check-in at a hotel, but you will have to walk there. You will not die of hunger; however, all shops will be closed. ”

What follows is the complete paralysis of all activities in the city. All buses remain in the garages, people stay at home. Fortunately, a few bomb blasts do not require fatalities, as protest rallies attract only a handful of the most passionate followers. To the casual visitor, it seems as if people don’t want to work and thus get a few days off.

Instead of savoring tea plantations, I find myself in Dhaka, until the deadlock over the next few days is complete.

The only vehicles on the streets are rickshaws, the air is as clean as in the countryside. For a distance that normally requires an hour of cycling through heavy traffic, now less than fifteen minutes of leisurely driving is enough. Fortunately, there is an open Indian embassy where an elderly, extremely incompetent official grants me Indian visa in my passport – a neighboring country that was united with Bangladesh under British rule, known as British Indian Ocean Territory.

India is my next stop. I am looking forward to it.

I leave Bangladesh with mixed feelings in anticipation of the outbreak of a political crisis in the coming months. Poverty, conservative interpretation of Islam and lack of vision to improve the situation, did not rise sympathy for this marginal and forgotten country on the map of tourist destinations.

Sadly, if the situation does not improve significantly, Bangladesh will remain a forgotten destination for a long time, where only the most stubborn travelers will go. An average earthling notices Bangladesh only in case of catastrophic floods covered in the news or during the annual monsoons, when causalities are counted in thousands.