Author Archives: Julie

Tips for visiting Bangladesh

We’ve found Bangladesh to be an incredibly rewarding destination. Its sights are varied and its people are friendly, however it can also be challenging and tiring, and there are some parts of the culture which it’s good to know about in advance. Here’s our list of top tips to get the most out of a trip to Bangladesh.

Clothing

For women, wear long trousers (or skirt) and a loose fitting top with sleeves (3/4 length is OK). You’ll get looked at anyway and not wearing tight or revealing clothes will make that a little less uncomfortable. You could even buy yourself some local clothes. Unless you’re visiting a mosque, wearing a headscarf is not necessary – not all Bangladeshi women wear them although most do. For men, long trousers and a shirt or T-shirt is fine. Only little boys wear shorts…

Culturally appropriate clothing

Eating

Eating is usually done without cutlery although most restaurants will give you a fork and/or spoon. If you want to try the local way (we highly recommend it!), make sure to only use your right hand as the left hand is considered unclean (its use is in the bathroom). It’s OK to use both hands to tear off a piece of bread but don’t put anything into your mouth with your left hand. An excellent consequence of eating with the hands is that a washbasin is almost always available, and if not someone will be able to help by pouring water from a jug over your hands.

Drinking

We don’t usually drink mineral water as we object to paying for water and dislike the amount of plastic waste from all the bottles. In other countries we’ve boiled water or refilled our bottles from filtered water in the place we were staying. We boiled some water in Dhaka and although it didn’t make us ill it tasted really bad so we were pushed towards mineral water for our stay. Most hotels provided a large bottle in the room although it’s a good idea to check that it is sealed as some hotels refill bottles from the tap.

Offering and Receiving

When giving or receiving anything (money, bill, shopping, gift…) use your right hand (similar reason to above). We found this one needed quite a bit of concentration, especially when trying to take whatever we’d bought from the vendor and pay at the same time!

Be friendly

You won’t have much choice about talking to people – Bangladeshis are incredibly open and friendly. Be patient with people, everyone wants to say hello, and we found that shopkeepers were rarely trying to sell us something, often they just wanted a short chat and a photo of us with them. It’s really easy to take photos of locals too, if the market vendors aren’t calling out for you to take their photo then just waving your camera and smiling is generally enough to get their agreement.

Invited into a shoe shop for a chat in Khulna

Say yes sometimes

We had some great experiences by agreeing to accompany locals places when usually we might have been a bit more reserved. Hasan, a student we met in Dhaka, spent a day and a half showing us around and wasn’t afraid to just walk into places we’d normally just try to peer into if we knew they were there at all (craftsmen’s workshops, schools, onboard a docked ferry to name a few!). We met Khoken and Nilu at a tea stand and got chatting, afterwards they invited us to their home where we met their children, ate homemade sweets and got photographed many, many times as well as having a good chat.

Nilu, Julie, Oishi, Andrew, Shish, Khoken

Prepare your answers to the following questions

Most locals don’t speak much English and so conversations usually proceed some way down the following list until they run dry…

How are you? – the standard response we got when we asked the same question was “I’m fine, thank you”
What is your country? – if they weren’t sure how to ask that they would call out country names as guesses, “Canada”, “Australia” and “Germany” all seemed plausible but “China” and “Japan” were just as common?!
What is your purpose/function in Bangladesh? – saying we were tourists always went down well
How are you feeling about Bangladesh? – the only possible answer here is ‘very good, Bangladesh is a very beautiful country’ which fortunately was also the truth most of the time
What is your service/profession? – how you earn your money is a source of interest and denotes your social standing, we came across some very impressive sounding job titles

Lower your accommodation standards

Most places are not set up with the expectations of foreign tourists in mind. Apart from the capital, Dhaka, where there are more options, the swankiest hotel in town will probably be fairly clean and have aircon and hot water, but in other hotels expect grimy bathrooms, hard beds and cold showers. Bringing your own sleeping bag liner is a good idea for any time when you’re not convinced by the cleanliness of the sheets although most times we found the floors and bedding looked OK but the walls had never been touched since the hotel was built. On the positive side rooms are incredibly cheap, a double room with ensuite bathroom in a middling hotel was £10 or less, and even the ‘swanky’ business hotel option was only £20-30.

Our room at the not so salubrious Hotel Hera in Mymensingh

Baksheesh

We already wrote about how difficult we found the whole concept and workings of baksheesh (or tips, or gifts, or bribes…) and I’m not sure that we ever felt comfortable enough with it to be able to offer advice although one useful thing that we read said not to feel pressured into giving if no service had actually been rendered.

Internet access

Finding wi-fi access points was a constant struggle. The only accommodation with wi-fi tended to be the higher end and business hotels, and while these weren’t really expensive it did seem a bit crazy to be paying an extra £10 per night just for internet access. Many of the smaller towns didn’t have that option anyway. Our next favoured option was to find a cafe or restaurant with wi-fi, these were thin on the ground and tended to be more expensive than (and not as tasty as) our usual eateries so we generally nursed a cup of coffee or Sprite for as long as we needed the internet! Failing that, internet cafes do exist but there weren’t many of them and they were small. Suffice to say most of our internet usage in Bangladesh was just keeping up-to-date with emails etc and falling behind with blogging and photo uploads. I suspect that a 3G SIM would be a good option if you had a smartphone with you. Mobile coverage was excellent and data packages looked to be quite cheap.

Checking emails in an internet cafe in Dinajpur

Ride in a rickshaw

Cycle rickshaws are the main form of transport for anyone needing to travel across town in Bangladesh. They’re great fun to ride in, you’re up nice and high so you can see what’s going on but travelling slow enough to take photos. They’re super cheap too with most journeys being less than £0.50. We have a few tips to avoid getting ripped off (in local terms…) but we also tried to remember that these guys have to work really hard for the few pence that we were paying them:

agree the price in advance so there are no unpleasant arguments at the end – drivers often ignored our ‘how much?’ and tried to make us just get in but we were persistent
try to have correct change – a few times drivers wanted to keep the difference as a ‘tip’ (there’s that baksheesh again…)
we once successfully used the guide price in the guidebook – the driver was asking for Tk100, we showed him that the Lonely Planet said Tk10 and he just agreed!

Seeing sights like four people in one rickshaw made us feel slightly better about getting into one with all our bags!

Bring a carrier bag

We heard that plastic bags were forbidden by law, certainly they’re uncommon. Anyone who has seen the mounds of plastic rubbish which can accumulate in developing countries will attest to this being a very good thing. Street food was usually served either on a small plate to eat at the stand and then pay, or in a twist of newspaper to takeaway.

Jalebi served in a small dish on the streets of Dhaka – I guess we need to eat them straightaway then!

Appreciate the art

Bangladesh is home to the kind of professional painters who no longer exist in most of the developed world. Everywhere we went we saw handpainted signs advertising goods and services, everything from the name painted above a shop’s entrance to a whole wall the size of a billboard. The rickshaws are an art form in their own right, they are colourfully decorated with paintings of film stars, birds, animals, even the Taj Mahal.

Handpainted fruit juice advert on a wall in Sonargaon

Bus travel

I could probably write a whole post about this. Taking buses in Bangladesh is something of an extreme sport. It can be extremely scary, bus drivers drive crazy fast, definitely haven’t been on the fuel efficiency course (both acceleration and braking is done hard), they sound the horn often, and seem unconcerned for their own safety or that of their passengers.
As a side note, make sure to insist your luggage goes on the roof, the conductor only wants it to go inside the bus so that he can try to charge you the price of a seat for it.

It’s not just luggage that travels on the bus roof in Bangladesh

Mymensingh and Birisiri, Bangladesh

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Our final excursion into the Bangladeshi countryside was in the very north of the country. We travelled by train due north from Dhaka to the town of Mymensingh and then another 3 hours by bus to the village of Birisiri, close to the border with India.

Mymensingh

Arriving in Mymensingh mid-afternoon we set out for a wander in the town to check out the handful of sights listed in the Lonely Planet. The old rajbari (landowner’s home) built in 1905 is now a teacher training college. As there was no one guarding the gate we just wandered in along with some locals who also looked to be out for a stroll.

Mymensingh Rajbari, complete with classical fountain out front

Around the back there is a pretty pond and the remains of what was the ladies’ bathing house

The next morning before catching the bus to Birisiri we decided to have a look around the market and twisting streets of the old town. At 9am the market was buzzing, it was heaving with people and as we squeezed down the narrow gaps between the stalls trying not to get in the way even we were feeling too overwhelmed to take photos. There was a pen full of goats at one end of a line of butchers shops, fishmongers gutting and descaling fish, and men carrying huge piles of vegetables around on their heads.

In lieu of taking lots of market photos, we stopped at a barbers shop for Andrew to get a haircut. It was under a narrow shelter on a street side and didn’t seem to be supplied with electricty so it was a scissor cut rather than the usual clippers and finished off around the edges with a cut-throat razor.

Birisiri

The bus to Birisiri left from the chaotic Bridge bus stand in Mymensingh. As buses in Bangladesh don’t have any English signage, and in any case this bus stand was more like a field haphazardly filled with buses rather than a well ordered bus station, we took our usual course of action in such a circumstance: wander around saying the name of our destination to anyone who looks at us and following their vague arm waving until we reach a bus where the conductor is shouting frantically and gesturing like “Come on, come on, the bus is late and you’re holding it up”. As if any bus in Bangladesh has ever run to any kind of schedule, actually he’s just trying to fit as many bodies as possible into its creaking shell.

I was alarmed when getting off the bus to notice these holes below our seats where our daysacks had been stowed…

By the middle of the afternoon we arrived in the village of Birisiri to find ourselves hemmed in by a group of very keen young rickshaw drivers (there’s obviously a lack of business here and a pair of foreigners is a good prospect). We declined their offers in favour of a stretch of our legs after three hours squeezed into a bus seat, but undeterred they followed us in convoy to the guidebook’s top pick of guesthouse where we found no rooms available. So we walked back towards the main road to our next choice followed by a chorus of ‘Please sit down’ while trying not to get our legs or bags tangled in rickshaw wheels. Fortunately Swarna Guesthouse had a (very cheap and surprisingly clean) room available.

Hemmed in by rickshaws

The people of Birisiri are largely from the minority Garo people who are thought to originate from the Tibetan plateau, we definitely noticed that some of the locals had distinctive cheekbones. Another thing we noticed was that the women seemed to be more forward here than elsewhere in Bangladesh, though we’d found women before who were friendly and looking for a chat they were in the minority whereas in Birisiri the women stared, smiled and shouted out hello as often as the men, I’m not sure if this is a difference between the countryside and the city, or because the Garo people have a matrilineal culture (property is handed down the female line although decisions are still usually made by the men), or because they’re largely Christian rather than Muslim or Hindu as the rest of the country. Perhaps a mix of all three.

Garo lady and shy baby

One of the churches in Birisiri

That evening we (well, mainly Andrew) negotiated with one of the entrepreneurial young rickshaw drivers for a boat trip to the China Clay Hills the next morning. His English was limited, but with the aid of pictures, charades and writing down numbers we had some kind of excursion booked for 8am and an agreed price.

It turned out to not be quite what we’d envisaged, travelling by rickshaw most of the way and then upriver to a mission and back by boat before continuing by rickshaw, but our driver Jewel was a good companion and it was fun to see some of the rural life even if we felt like our bones were being shaken to bits by the bumpy roads.

Pulling the rickshaw up onto a bridge on the way to the river

Jewel showing that he is a man of many talents, expertly rowing the boat

Us looking a little windswept on the Someswari River

Ranikhong Mission: school from the river, church and monument commemorating the first missionary invited to visit the area

Although really the day was more about seeing the countryside, our nominal destination was the China Clay Hills, a small area of low mounds where the clay is mined for pottery and the lakes in the depressions are a startling turquoise.

Lush green countryside from the back of the rickshaw

Lake and China Clay Hills

By the end of the day we felt that we knew Jewel well enough for Andrew to ask him if he could have a go at driving the rickshaw for the last section, something he’d been itching to do since our first ride in one four weeks earlier in Dhaka. It was pretty hard work even on the flat, but he was glad to have had the chance to give it a try. We caused a fair bit of amusement amongst the other rickshaw drivers rolling back into Birisiri with Andrew at the helm and Jewel sitting in the back with me!

In charge of a rickshaw!

Muktagacha

On our last afternoon back in Mymensingh we took a local bus to the nearby town of Muktagacha with another impressive rajbari and a sweet shop which is famous throughout the land. The caretaker of the rajbari was keen to give us a tour, he only spoke a limited amount of English so we couldn’t get into details but it was enough to get the gist of the place. It looks as if the Department of Archaeology is renovating the place so it’s likely to be even more impressive if less atmospheric in future.

Renovation work underway on the facade of Muktagacha Rajbari

Inside the rajbari (clockwise from top left): Shiva temple columns, zamindar’s house, buildings in disrepair, us in the central courtyard

Afterwards we made our way to Gopal Pali Prosida Monda Sweet Shop to sample the monda. These sweets are made from grainy sweetened yoghurt and were nice enough although they weren’t my favourite of the sweets that we tried in Bangladesh (but then I’m no connosieur!). The former zamindar (landowner) must have been impressed though, because when he tried the sweets 200 years ago he promptly employed the sweetmaker as part of his personal staff and it was only with Partition in 1947 that the zamindar’s family left for India and the sweetmaker’s descendants opened up the shop which has been doing a brisk trade ever since.

There’s a lion over the door of Gopal Pali Prosida Monda Sweet Shop, monda sweets

Bangladeshi food

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If I tell you that Indian restaurants in the UK are usually owned by Bangladeshis and hence serve Bengali food then anyone who knows my preference for Indian takeaway at home will immediately know that I really loved the food in Bangladesh! We found the food to be more mellow and with a more rounded flavour than the bright and sharp tastes of the SE Asian countries, and while it can still pack a punch it wasn’t anywhere near as chilli packed as some of the dishes we tried in Thailand.

Breads

After travelling through the almost bread-free zone of eastern Asia where if you get bread at all it is sweet and with an almost cakey texture, it was great to find bread on the menu again. In Bangladesh, flatbreads are eaten at all times of the day and are often cooked on the street outside the restaurant.

The easiest way to spot a restaurant is to look for the guy at the bread station out front

We came across three main types. Rotis are flatbreads cooked without fat, they’re soft and a nice way to scoop up your curry. Parathas were perhaps the most common, again flatbreads but this time fried on a griddle and sometimes with delicious flaky layers like a good puff pastry. Finally, Andrew’s favourite the naan roti which is cooked stuck onto the inside of a domed oven and puffs up nicely.

Rotis, parathas, and naan roti

Rice

Curry type meals in restaurants are generally served with rice unless you specifically ask for bread and a whole plate of plain boiled rice will be placed in front of you with the meat and/or vegetables served in separate small dishes – a difference to the UK where the meat is very much the main part of the meal, here it is just enough to taste, an indication of the expense of meat compared to the amount an average Bangladeshi has to spend on their meal.

A full plate of rice with a little bit of curry and some vegetables

Biryanis were available all over and were a delicious and filling meal. The rice is fried with a small amount of meat (mutton, chicken or beef) and served with a side of curry sauce.

Beef biryani with curry sauce and salad

Dal

Dal, or curried lentils, became a mainstay for us during the month. Breakfast was usually parathas, dal and mixed vegetables. The lentils used were often chana dal (split chickpeas) but split mung beans were also common. It’s usual to have a side of dal with a more substantial meal too to moisten that mountain of rice.

Breakfast! (Dal front right)

We saw a bean stew being served up from street stands on a couple of occassions too but otherwise beans didn’t seem to be commonly used.

Vegetables

Surprising to us was the prevalence of cucumbers. Both cucumbers and carrots are commonly sold on the street (peeled and partially split to form fingers) from big trays as a snack, usually with a hefty shake of salty spice. And a plain cucumber salad appears alongside pretty much every lunch or dinner meal for no charge – I definitely found it useful for reducing the burn on more fiery dishes!

Cucumber side salad, just watch out for the raw chillis!

A mixed vegetable curry (shobji) is a common dish served at breakfast time. Aubergines, cauliflowers, spinach and potatoes are commonly used as vegetables as well as a small bitter gourd type vegetable which looks a bit like a wrinkled up cucumber.

Fruit

On our first day in Dhaka we saw prepared pineapple for sale. Coming from SE Asia where chopped fruit is commonly sold on the street we thought it would be a refreshing snack – we weren’t expecting it be shaken in a mustard dressing before being given to us – it was so potent that I thought it might have left a hole in my tongue! Otherwise fruit was widely available with bananas, oranges, and pomegranates all providing us with much needed vitamins. It’s just a shame that the mangos weren’t in season.

Mustard-spiked pineapple

Meat

Meat was either mutton (goat more often than sheep), chicken or occassionally beef. We didn’t seen any pork – it’s forbidden to Muslims. These are served in one of two ways, either with a curried masala sauce (of which there are different varieties but often only one at a time available in a given restaurant) or marinated and grilled as kebabs.

Meat dishes (clockwise from top left): amazing fried mutton kidney that we had on our first night in Dhaka, chicken masala, mutton kebabs, tandoori chicken leg

Fish

Bangladesh sits astride the deltas of several enormous rivers. With that much water in the country it’s hardly surprising that fish is a staple. We saw stalls selling dried fish, but fresh seemed to be most common. It was usually served in a masala sauce but we also had it fried and grilled.

A proud fishmonger in Srimongol, fried fish as part of a buffet meal, fish curry

Street snacks

There are lots of different kinds of street snacks, usually a parcel wrapped up in dough and deep fried. Samosas and pakoras you might have heard of, but puri (saucer sized rounds with various fillings) and shingra (balls filled with a potato mixture) were new to us. A favourite of ours were mouglai, large sheets of dough wrapped around an often egg based filling to form a kind of flat envelope shape. Freshly cooked with the ubiquitous cucumber side salad they were a fast and filling light meal.

Clockwise from left: Frying up mouglai on a street in Khulna, masala puris with sauce and salad, shingra and samosa, delicious lentil and onion pakoras for an afternoon snack on the Sundarbans cruise

Drinks

Tea (cha) is the drink of choice in Bangladesh. It’s served in small glasses from street stands everywhere. It comes in two varieties, one with milk (dudh cha) and one without (lal cha, literally red tea), both are very sweet. Milk tea is sometimes made with condensed milk, but is better when made with fresh milk kept at boiling point in a big pan next to the tea kettle. Black/red tea is sometimes pepped up a little with the addition of whole spices, we had at various times, a piece of root ginger, a clove, and a piece of Indian bay leaf. The tea is poured from the kettle over fresh tea leaves in a strainer and into the glass.

Andrew enjoying a cup of dudh cha, tea stand with a pan of boiling milk and a kettle of tea, black/red tea with added Indian bay leaf

Alcohol is not widely available in Bangladesh as it is illegal for Bangladeshis (or Muslim ones at least) to buy it. Many soft drinks are available in restaurants from the familiar Coke, Sprite and 7Up to less familiar local brands. A more traditional local drink is lassi, made from yoghurt and served in sweet or salty versions. It’s a good way to cool your mouth down if your meal was a bit on the spicy side.

Lassi, Bengali for ‘Coca Cola’, Drinking from a coconut

Sweets

Bangladeshis definitely have a sweet tooth and traditional sweet shops are common in every town. These sell lots of very sweet small cakes as well as sweetened yoghurt (misti doi) in clay pots – a favourite of ours! We also tried jalebi, deep fried dough swirls soaked in sugar syrup, for the sake of your teeth it’s probably best to only have one, but they’re very good.

A wide array of sweets in a Dhaka sweetshop

All tried in the interests of research – honest! Including jalebi (top left) and misti doi (bottom right)

Not really a sweet, but the bill often arrived with a plate of fried fennel and/or coriander seeds to aid digestion and freshen the breath

12 month summary

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We have now reached the one year anniversary of our two year trip! Here’s our summary of the last three months.

Meeting elephants in Chiang Mai, pretending to be Buddhas at Sukhothai Historical Park in Thailand, the iconic Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, we commandeered a rickshaw in Birisiri in northern Bangladesh

Countries visited in the last three months (1st January to 31st March)

Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh (total visited to date on this trip = 12)

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Easily within budget, our average daily spend over the three months has been £50.59. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £62.40.

Bangladesh has been an incredibly cheap place to travel with March’s spend bumped up only by flights and our 3 day tour to the Sundarbans. Our record day was just £9.32 including a 3 hour bus journey, an ensuite room, food for the day and a haircut for Andrew!

Accommodation is again the biggest expense at 34.0% – half of the quarter was spent in Chiang Mai and the apartment we stayed in was relatively expensive.
Guides and tours – 16.9%. We took some expensive tours in Thailand and Bangladesh including spending a day with elephants, taking a Thai cookery class and 3 days in the Sundarbans National Park
Food is next highest at 16.4% – just £8.30 per day for both of us. Eating out is tasty and inexpensive in Thailand and Bangladesh, again for much of the time we were living in the apartment in Chiang Mai and cooking for ourselves – also fairly inexpensive.
Intercity transportation was 10.0%. Lower than other quarters as we were settled in Chiang Mai for half of the time, over half of the spend in this category is our flights from Kuala Lumpur to Dhaka.
Alcohol was 7.3% this quarter. This is wholly accounted for by the first two months as alcohol is extremely restricted in Bangladesh and we only had one small can of beer each during our whole month there!
Local transportation was very low at just 2.4%. This includes hiring motorbikes several times in Thailand and many, many very cheap rickshaw rides in Bangladesh.

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

Julie – That we would need to take a break from travelling. It sounds crazy that anyone would need a holiday from a holiday but by November we were pretty burnt out and exhausted from almost constant sightseeing and movement (albeit at a reasonably relaxed pace) and we were craving a place where we could slow down, unpack and catch up on admin (blogging, photo uploads, Skype with family back home). I’m pleased to report that after two months of rest we were again raring to go!

Andrew – How much we rely on the internet. For something that’s only been around for about 25 years to have dramatically altered the way we research and plan our travel is astounding to me. Perhaps it’s because we feel more comfortable about a place or a journey if we’ve got an idea of what to expect, but going from the high-speed wifi everywhere connected of Thailand and Malaysia to the no-speed wifi rarely-where of Bangladesh was both frustrating and liberating. I think it’s definitely more of an adventure to say “we’ll get a bus from here to there” and see what happens, than “we’ll get bus XYZ that departs every hour from ABC station, takes 3½ hours and arrives at DEF station, 1km to the west of the centre of town.” The good news is that even with access to the internet we can still choose to be a little more adventurous.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

Taking tap water for granted. We boiled water in Thailand, we were encouraged to drink water from the cooler in Malaysia, and in Bangladesh – a country that by one estimate we heard ¼ is covered in water – it was hot and we drank a lot of bottled water. There were a few bouts of the Bengali Bowels after we forgot now and then, but most places we stayed included a large bottle of water with the room rate.

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – The temples of Puthia in north-western Bangladesh really blew me away with their abundant carvings but the day I really remember is the day that we were elephant owners in Thailand.

Andrew – The flora and fauna of the Sundarbans is a very close second, but for me it’s the modern splendour of the Wat Rong Khun or White Temple in Chiang Rai. It’s a fairytale palace of decadent detail that I hope I’m still alive to see completed in 2070 – I’ll be into my 90s by then!

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

Julie – On the train ride from Rajshahi to Joypurhat in western Bangladesh our window was missing the bolt that would hold it open. We fashioned a bit of a wedge from some paper which wasn’t ideal but better than nothing. The two Bangladeshi ladies sitting opposite noticed our struggles and (unprompted by us) mentioned the problem to the ticket inspector when he came round. A couple of minutes later, a uniformed porter appeared, grudgingly fiddled with the window for a few seconds before slamming it shut and then unbolted and shut the ladies’ window as well! The older of the ladies remonstrated with him but he grumpily shrugged and walked off. We caught their eye and all of us burst out laughing which broke the ice and we spent the rest of the journey having a very interesting conversation with them (after we’d re-wedged our window open of course!).

Andrew – Bearing in mind that most English conversations we had in Bangladesh consisted of “What’s your country?”, “How are you?”, with the rare and more advanced venturing a “Where [do you plan to] visit [in] Bangladesh?”, it was in answering this last question that after reeling off a list that didn’t include Cox’s Bazaar (the longest beach in the world, and the proudest place in every Bangladeshi’s heart) that my inquisitor responded in true American sit-com style with a loud “No Cox’s Bazaar? Seriously?!“

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

That would be Hasan, an English literature student we met at the Pink Palace on our first day in Bangladesh. As a precursor to the kindness we were to receive across the country, especially from students, Hasan took us on an impromptu tour of the riverside area of Dhaka into places and businesses we wouldn’t have found without his help – a school with amazing old buildings, a sign-painters, a cinema theatre (just to take a quick look – without paying!), and the markets to name a few. We enjoyed his company so we hooked up with him again on our last day in Bangladesh for a day trip to Sonargaon.

Andrew with Hasan at Sonargaon on our last day in Bangladesh

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Navigating baksheesh in Bangladesh. Baksheesh, for those who don’t know, is kind of like a tip or reward for good service, a higher tip to ensure that repeated service remains good, or a sort of Robin Hood payment that the more well-off are to feel pleased to be given the opportunity to give, and in some cases, an out and out bribe. Once we’d worked out if the situation called for baksheesh, we then hit the minefield of having to work out how much to give. There were a few uneasy experiences but they were very short-lived as we reasoned, being tourists it’s likely we’d been a little overcharged already!

Rajshahi, Bangladesh

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A day after our Sundarbans tour we took the early morning train 300km north-west to Rajshahi. The 7 hour journey was very picturesque passing through lush green countryside and many small towns and villages before crossing the huge Padma River (you might know it by its Indian name, the Ganges) into Rajshahi Division. The windows in Bangladeshi trains open right up so you can lean out and take photos too. Not something that the health and safety people are likely to approve of perhaps, but it added to the fun for us.

Crossing ‘Harding’s Bridge’ over the Padma River. We were excited to spot signs on the bridge showing that it was built by the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company from Darlington, England!

Puthia & Natore

On our first day we decided to head out to the village of Puthia, a 30 minute bus ride away which the Lonely Planet describes as

…positively bursting at the seams with dilapidated palaces and bewitching temples, and is one of the shining highlights of this part of Bangladesh. If Puthia were in almost any other counry the ruins here would be seething with camera-snapping tourists, but lost as it is in the remote paddy fields of Bangladesh, you’ll have it all to yourself

I was a little skeptical of such a gushing recommendation but it really was absolutely stunning. We were given a tour by the caretaker, Mr Bishwana, and it was just temple after temple, almost all well preserved and beautifully decorated with terracotta tiles.

The first temple we visited was the five-spired Shiva Temple (right) which stands beside a pond at the entrance to the village

Shiva Temple (clockwise from top left): Carvings over the doorway, many of the exterior carvings were defaced during the 1971 Liberation War, inside the temple is a huge black Shiva lingam, arches in the gallery around the temple

The other five temples that we visited in Puthia varied massively in size and shape but all had similar decoration, covered from top to bottom with terracotta tiles showing characters and stories from Hindu mythology.

Julie in front of a diminutive temple, Andrew with the huge Govinda Temple, both of us in front of the squat but wide Anika Temple

A tiny sample of the terracotta tiles of Puthia’s temples

Having finished our tour of the village’s sights by lunchtime, we decided to move on to Natore, another 30 minute bus ride away where the Lonely Planet assured us that there was a ‘magnificent but dilapidated’ rajbari, basically a decaying Bangladeshi stately home. The buildings of the rajbari are indeed beautiful, unfortunately we hadn’t factored into our planning the fact that it was Friday (aka the weekend) which meant that busloads of schools had descended for picnics, loud music playing, prizegiving and harassment of foreign tourists…

Boarded up rajbari building – I know it looks like there’s no-one else there but trust me, they were behind us…

Rajbari buildings reflected in a pond, stained glass and a glimpse of the interior through a boarded up door, small Shiva temple in the grounds, Mughal style arch

After about 45 minutes we were so sick of having our photo taken that we just had to leave. The only bright spot was the small boy who befriended us – I’ve never seen anyone look so pleased to receive an orange!

Lots of attention (clockwise from top left): Us swamped by a family wanting a photo, Andrew with the local boy we befriended, this woman grabbed me by the hand and led me across to where her family were sitting to pose with them, a bus group’s encampment complete with bright tent and loudspeakers

Rajshahi City

Rajshahi itself is a university city and as such packed with young, chatty students. We got a tour around the campus of Rajshahi College and its colonial architecture by a student wishing to practice his English, and an offer to be shown around the university campus by an equally keen student which we declined due to its distance from the city centre.

One of the colonial buildings which make up Rajshahi College’s campus

Whenever a local spoke to us about the city they almost always mentioned one or both of the following, the Padma River, and mangoes! The city is situated on the banks of the Padma and has an attractive promenade along the riverbank which is lively in the evening. The climate of Rajshahi is perfect for mango trees and we saw orchards in the countryside all around the city. The trees were in flower during our visit and although the fruit doesn’t ripen until June we heard that some can be as big as 2kg!

Sunset over the River Padma

The main sight in the city, other than wandering and looking at the architecture and markets, is the Varendra Research Museum which is managed by the university. It contains an impressive number of artefacts from nearby archeaological sites, in particular some beautiful Hindu carvings. We were again treated to a personalised tour, this time by the museum’s secretary who hovered over us a little bit at first but seemed to relax as the tour went on and told us some stories and history as well as shooing away anyone who started staring at us.

Varendra Research Museum exterior (no photos allowed inside)

Sona Masjid

The second day trip that we made from Rajshahi was to Sona Masjid, a vast site spanning 32 sq. km across the border between Bangladesh and India (where it’s known as Gaud). It is the remains of a huge city which was the capital of Bengal for many years. On the Bangladeshi side are a number of well preserved mosques, a palace and a mausoleum, some dating from as far back as the 15th century.

According to our guidebook the bus journey was supposed to take 3 hours, but after just 2.25 hours we were ejected at the side of the road beside Chhoto Sona Masjid (Small Golden Mosque). Somewhat shaken by the super fast journey we decided to grab a cup of tea, but at the local tea stand we were soon surrounded by staring men, so we supped up quickly and moved off to the mosque. It’s no longer golden, its name refers to the fact that its domes were once gilded but it is still impressive with stone carvings outside and a cool interior. The mosque’s imam rushed in during our visit, keen to engage us in conversation (and point out the donation box).

Us outside Chhoto Sona Masjid

Chhoto Sona Masjid decoration including an arabic inscription above the main door (top)

From there we moved down the road to the buildings which make up the Tahkhana complex comprising a small palace, a mosque and the mausoleum of Shah Niamatullah. Here we felt a bit persecuted by the over attention, having to fend off a tuk-tuk driver and various guides as well as getting annoyed by a group of lads who followed us around taking pictures on their mobiles. We don’t really mind if people want to take a picture of us or with us but it’s a bit nicer if they say hello and ask if it’s OK or at least just take one and then move on…

Tahkhana complex (clockwise from top left): Shah Niamatullah Mosque, Tahkhana Palace from across the pond, being stared at, Mausoleum of Shah Niamatullah

As we walked down the dusty road to the other two mosques, we were passed by lots of brightly decorated trucks making their way to the official border crossing point. We’ve noticed that all of the trucks in Bangladesh seem to be painted like this, I’m not sure if the colours signify ownership or if there’s some other reason but they’re very cheerful.

Brightly painted trucks

Thankfully both Darasbari Mosque and Khania Dighi Mosque were much quieter and we managed to have a look around in relative peace. It seems strange that so many elaborate and historic mosques are scattered around this area, tucked away in the farmland and miles away from any major centres of population. It made us think about the upheavals that must have happened over the last few hundred years to cause such shifts of people and marvel that these buildings at least survived relatively intact.

Ruined Darasbari Mosque is set in a peaceful location down a path away from the main road

Brickwork decoration and arches of Darasbari Mosque

Khania Dighi Mosque is surrounded by large old mango trees

We caught the last bus of the day back to Rajshahi, tired and dusty, but very glad to have made the trip. The bus was busy but fortunately not quite as crazy as the bus that we took in the morning and much closer to the quoted 3 hour duration.