After a rather gruelling 23 hours of travel (despite Air Emirates being wonderful), I arrived in Dhaka two days ago. And I was definitely not in Kansas anymore: as our plane descended to land at the airport I could have sworn, from my window seat, that we were about to land on a farm - what with water canals going through the grass fields beside the airstrip, haha. Funnily enough, though, the moment it really hit me that I was finally in Bangladesh was when I was in line at customs, and someone's cellphone went off. The ringtone was that of a flute playing a traditional Bengali folk tune, and I couldn't help but grin at how very Bengali it was.
My aunt and uncle picked me up from the airport and we took a taxi to their place - and the drive there was crazy. I thought driving in India was crazy, but Dhaka was possibly crazier, minus the adorable cows. And also minus the smell of piss, to my surprise (I expected it to stink as such, as it often did when I was in Delhi). Dhaka feels like a less developed, more chaotic version of Delhi to me. There is just so much going on in the streets - men pulling long carts of bamboo and bricks, constantly honking cars and buses, a billion bicycle rickshaws covered in awesome art that I hope I can photograph later on, people selling all sorts of goods on the sides of the road (there aren't many sidewalks), and of course - beggars. There's also significantly, noticeably more men on the streets than women, and I don't know if this is because women stay home or because the city is full of male migrant workers, or both. Either way, it translates to getting stared at more by virtue of being a female, and to creepy boys following me into shops just to stare at me (ugh).
Also spotted on the streets of Dhaka: these bicycle rickshaws that were pulling carts, on top of which sat - there is no other way to describe this - cages full of little school children. They looked horribly unsafe and adorable all at once. Given that the kids were all in school uniforms I assumed this was the bizarre Bengali version of the schoolbus, and not children being carted off to be sold in broad daylight... right? Right?
Bangladesh makes me laugh.
My aunt and uncle picked me up from the airport and we took a taxi to their place - and the drive there was crazy. I thought driving in India was crazy, but Dhaka was possibly crazier, minus the adorable cows. And also minus the smell of piss, to my surprise (I expected it to stink as such, as it often did when I was in Delhi). Dhaka feels like a less developed, more chaotic version of Delhi to me. There is just so much going on in the streets - men pulling long carts of bamboo and bricks, constantly honking cars and buses, a billion bicycle rickshaws covered in awesome art that I hope I can photograph later on, people selling all sorts of goods on the sides of the road (there aren't many sidewalks), and of course - beggars. There's also significantly, noticeably more men on the streets than women, and I don't know if this is because women stay home or because the city is full of male migrant workers, or both. Either way, it translates to getting stared at more by virtue of being a female, and to creepy boys following me into shops just to stare at me (ugh).
Also spotted on the streets of Dhaka: these bicycle rickshaws that were pulling carts, on top of which sat - there is no other way to describe this - cages full of little school children. They looked horribly unsafe and adorable all at once. Given that the kids were all in school uniforms I assumed this was the bizarre Bengali version of the schoolbus, and not children being carted off to be sold in broad daylight... right? Right?
Bangladesh makes me laugh.
