This is Dhaka

Tuesday, 22 January 2008

I'm off on a mini-adventure to Kathmandu, Nepal! (Visa run.)

I took the bus from Rayenda to Dhaka, which arrived in a record 9 hours. (My previous bus trip to Dhaka took 13, and when we rolled into the city on the night before Eid ul Azha, there were cows tied up and for sale, everywhere. The streets look different without cows!)

On my rickshaw ride through Dhaka, I:
- watched a bow, about 10 years, beaming and single-skipping rope backwards in the street
- passed by clusters of men on every street corner, idly sipping cha and eating bread delicately pinced between their thumbs and forefingers
- plugged my ears as my rickshaw driver yelped like a siren, so that the people, tricycles, buses, bicycles, rickshaws, cars, and taxis around us would move
- sped through a narrow alley of narrower shops where young men sat in circles, stamping and tamping teetering stacks of paper into envelopes and bags (plastic bags aren't allowed here)
- was involved in a three way decelerating rickshaw collision at a speed of about 2 miles per hour over a knot of poor pavement. All of us passengers simply poked our heads out from the sunshades to have a look, then sat back to let the drivers continue on
- passed the mildewed white walls of Dhaka University, where female students wearing smart glasses laughed and chatted easily on the curb
- caught a whiff of an unseet biscuit factory in production - yum!

This, I thought, is Dhaka.