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One man, Muhammad Yunus, has brought the name Bangladesh to world attention. He did it by wining the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for Economics. He came up with a simple yet revolutionary idea —lending tiny sums to poor people looking to escape poverty by starting businesses.
Yunus' notion — today, known as micro-credit — has spread around the globe in the past three decades and is said to have helped at least 100 million people take their first steps out of poverty.
Yunus’ home in Bangladeshi is Dhaka, the capital of the country of 140 million people, where Yunus was a national hero even before the Nobel Prize. Now everyone is asking questions about Bangladesh. I am sure Muhammad Yunus will help the poor people of his country in another way, by bringing on tourism. But where is Bangladesh?
Thai Airways International, seeing the potential of Bangladesh as a destination, began flights to Dhaka, then called Dacca, in the mid 1960s and two years ago they inaugurated flights to the seaport town Chittagong in the south. Bangladesh is not listed as a holiday destination with Royal Orchid Holidays but with all the publicity the country is getting, some travellers may want to see the country. THAI can take them there.
The exciting thing about Bangladesh, someone recently told me, is when you get off the beaten track. I found this amusing. “Isn't Bangladesh itself off the beaten track?” I asked. The person who told me didn't think it was amusing. He was from Bangladesh.
However, I have to agree with him. When you get away from the big cities, Bangladesh can be one of the most interesting destinations in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, it isn't a country most travel offices would recommend; in fact, some travel books don't even mention it, or if they do, they just gloss over it. But Bangladesh, for the traveller looking for something different, does have something to offer.
Study a map of Bangladesh and you will begin to understand the country. Upon this vast delta where the Ganges and Brahmaputra overflow once a year, some 140 million people live. Next to Java in Indonesia, it is the most densely populated area in the world, with 1,566 people per square mile. (Any figure over 1,000 is considered to be over-populated.) And yet there are dense jungles, home of the Royal Bengal tiger; an empty, white sandy beach that stretches 75 miles; remote hill tribes who live in seclusion in the mountains above Chittagong; and an area called the Sunderbans which you can explore by small boat and not see another soul in days.
I first saw Bangladesh when it was still called East Pakistan (independence came in 1973) and Dhaka, the capital, was spelled Dacca. I came overland by jeep from Calcutta, when the rivers were high, and it took four days to travel 250 miles. It seemed we spent more time on ferries than actually driving on roads.
But what a novelty it was to drive aboard a ferry and travel long distances by river. Some rivers were so unbelievably wide they looked more like lakes and inland seas rather than rivers. We could hardly see the other side.
The first ferry we took was little more than a raft-like boat, not much larger than our jeep but it appeared safe—until a hundred or more passengers swarmed aboard almost swamping us. Nevertheless, with jeep and an army of passengers, and only inches above water, it carried us safely across the Bhirab River east of Jessore.
After landing on the other side and then driving no more than an hour, we reached the next landing at Goalundo Ghat, only to discover we had to wait until the following morning for the ferry. We quickly learned that the virtue of travelling in Bangladesh is to have patience. And if you don't mind putting up in old fashion rest houses, some that still have puka fans suspended from the ceilings, accommodations were no problem.
Rest houses are comfortable, and for those who are driving they offer security. Often called Dak Bungalows, they are inside enclosed compounds, like fortresses, in which the gates are closed during the night.
The ferry the next morning left at 6 a.m. It was a five-hour journey. I felt that we were sailing on the Nile 2,000 years ago. Hundreds of back-hulled ships, their triangular sails filled with wind, made a striking sight on the river. I watched one convoy of double mast sailing vessels cross our bow. Their gunwales were high off the water, and their bowsprits turned upwards like huge ramrods. These looked like18th century pirate boats, with bellowing square sails and seamen guarding the foredecks.
Farther down river there were smaller, red-sailed boats. Silhouetted against the glare of the morning sun, near-naked seamen with outstretched arms stood along the decks, tending the sails and tiller. I have never seen so many different types of sailing craft anywhere else in the world as I have in Bangladesh.
Where there aren't rivers, a network of canals serve as water roads for the smallest sailing boats. When the wind fails, a score of men leap off the boats and walk along the sides of the canals, pulling the boats by long lines fastened to their bows. And every so often, usually where two canals converge, there will be gigantic fishing nets worked by half a dozen near-naked men.
One is hardly ever out of sight of a village. With a population well over 140 million, 91 per cent of the people live in villages and there are more than 68,000 villages scattered around the country. Jute is their major crop.
Monsoon rains in Bangladesh are both a blessing and a curse. Rainfall in the delta reaches 226 inches a year. (Both Paris and New York, which are considered rainy, have an average of 45 inches a year.) In an average year, the floods inundate 28,000 square kilometres of the country, bringing rich layers of silt that make land fertile. In a bad year monsoons can play havoc and cause untold destruction. Yet without the monsoon rains, there could be no crops.
The country has 6,000 kilometres of roads, but during the monsoon ferry boats and river steamers are the main means of transportation.
The Bangladeshis are a curious people. They live without privacy. You can be on a seemingly empty road, without a soul in sight, stop your car to relieve yourself, and a hundred people will suddenly appear out of nowhere. A Baptist missionary I met on a ferry, who had spent 20 years in the country, told me that the people loved books, especially if they had pictures and photographs in them. "Give them a Sears catalog and it replaces the Bible," he said. "They cut out the pictures and paste them on their walls. The women copy the dresses; the men make furniture from the pictures — toys, tables, chairs, everything."
Dhaka is not an impressive town, and there is little to see and do, but its importance cannot be underestimated. Established in 1608 as the seat of the Imperial Mongul Viceroys, it has been the Far Eastern centre for the teaching of Islam.
Ten miles south of Dhaka is Narayanjanj, the largest inland river port in Bangladesh. It's colourful harbour swarms with thousands of small boats bringing jute to the mills, the largest mills in the world.
Throughout the country when jute is being harvested, the 6,000 miles of roads become drying beds for jute, making driving difficult as motorists literally drive over the jute, thus helping break down the fibers.
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Once the home of a maharaja, before independence
A guard proudly stands on duty
Downtown traffic in Dhaka is partly rickshaws
A school teachers educating the country's 140 million
University students, and pretty too
More university students
Sunglasses are a status in Bangladesh
Travel by train is slow, uncomfortable but it gets
you there
Porters work hard for the little change they get
Women passengers aboard a local rain
Nothing to smile about
Ferry travel is the main means of transportation
Without docks ferries pull up on riverbanks
Not very modern but it gets you there
Shipments of jute on the river
Unloading jute by sheer labour
Every type of boat imaginable plies the rivers of Bangladesh
The author with his Land Cruiser jeep crosses Bangladesh
For more about travelling in Bangladesh and
Southeast Asia
by motor car, read the author's book Who Needs A Road?
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