The Most Adventurous 24 Hours of My Life

And Joanna’s life too… which I believe says a lot.

(Warning - This is the longest post you will ever read by me… but it truly has been the most action-packed day of my life, so I don’t know how to shorten it. Sorry.)

Boring background info: I picked Joanna up from the airport on Wednesday morning. We got stuck in a two hour traffic jam. We feared death (Fear of Death = A common theme that you will pick up on anytime I mention transportation in this blog). We napped. We ate room service. We left for the bus depot.
No one at the bus station spoke any English so we blindly trusted that after showing a few men our ticket that they would get us on the right bus and our luggage too. (Blind Trust = Another common theme you will discover, and one that is proving to be an absolute necessity in this country.) Blind trust paid off and after a few bus transfers that we didn’t quite understand and about five hours, we arrived in Srimongol.

Here is where the adventure intensifies.

The bus dropped us off in Srimongol at about 9:00pm. Fairly quickly, we were surrounded by about 10 rickshaw-wallahs (men who pull people around in terrifying and decorative bicycle carts) offering us a ride. Unfortunately, none of them knew where our Eco Cottage was. So one of them stole my itinerary and started wandering up and down the [busy and dark] street asking if anyone knew where this cottage was. No luck. Fortunately I had my cell phone with me so I called Mahmud. No answer. So I called Rubel (my guide from Dhaka) and passed the phone over to the self-appointed leader of our group of helpers, which had grown to about 30 men at this point. Not a single woman. After a short conversation, the leader felt pretty confident about where we were going and gave instructions to no less than three rickshaw drivers (yes, we had a lot of luggage) and - in sign language, as English was not playing a role tonight - told us that we should give each driver 10 taka (about 15 cents). And away we were, holding on for dear life whilst trying to take pictures of our crazy journey and praying to God that we would meet up with our luggage again soon. I wish I had gotten a good picture of our driver as he looked to be about 12 years old and kept looking back at us with the hugest smile I’ve ever seen. I think it was a pretty proud moment for him that the older men only got our luggage, but he got to drive the two Canadian women.

And then we arrived. About 200 feet from where we had started and completely in the wrong place. Mahmud called at this point and once again my phone was handed back to a complete stranger. Once again we attracted a crowd. All of a sudden the tallest Bangladeshi man I have ever seen emerged from the crowd and spoke the most beautiful words I have ever heard… “Can I help you ma’am? I am a tour guide and it is my duty to help you.” So Mahmud/ my phone were transferred to our new guardian angel, our luggage was loaded into two baby taxis, and we were on our way out of the town an into a dark, winding road smelling of tea, pineapple, and relief. Heaven. Needless to say, we had found our tour guide for the next day, Tapas.

The Nishorgo (Shamsul) Eco Cottage is breathtaking. We have our own private hut - woven completely out of bamboo - overlooking a bubbling river (which is apparently a raging river during the rainy season). The night is filled with the squeaks of geckos and the call of a cricket-like bug appropriately called “Jungle Music”. Heaven.

More background: Over the past few years US AID, the Bangladesh government and the local “Nishorgo” group has been working to bring eco tourism to the area by training up guides like Tapas and hoteliers like Shamsul.

Tapas picked us up ready for a full day. First we went to Lowacherra National Park where we were informed that pretty much every species of animal in the park could kill us, from spiders to snakes to wild pigs (the barking deer and hoolock gibbon are harmless). This is where Tapas noticed that we were both wearing sandals and proceeded to make us take off our shoes so that he could rub a fine, dusty medicine on our feet.

Seeing our nervousness, our fearless leader decided that the best thing to do at this point would be to mess with our heads. After a few heart stopping false alarms, Joanna called out “I’m on a snake. There’s a snake. Oh crap. There’s a snake by me.” Given the calm in her voice, I thought she was just trying to point out some interesting wildlife. But Tapas covered about 30 feet of ground in 2 seconds and screamed “Oh shit, that was a King Cobra”. And just like that, the jokes stopped and all three of us tread very carefully on our way out of the forest.

Later we went to a local tribal village which was truly amazing. Their houses are all painted vibrantly… I think the turquoise, purple and silver one was my favourite. Most of the people in the village were pretty shy but we were incredibly fortunate to be invited into the home of Lila where we visited with her and some young school girls and they got to watch my first - and last - beetle nut experience. Basically, a chewing tobacco that their village is known for. Have you ever chewed on the end of a 2x4? Personally, I haven’t. But I imagine that the taste is close. What really impressed me about the whole village was how clean everything was. I’ve been living like a sweaty, stinky, dirtball since arriving. And here they are in the middle of the forest with no electricity or running water and immaculate.

Then we went off to the lake, which was beautiful, but the real treat was when we happened upon a group of tea planters taking a break and cooling off by the lake. One woman was in the lake when we walked over but quickly ran out. We asked her if she would go back in the lake and pose for a picture. She said only if we gave her money. Now, normally I would never pay someone for a picture, but the fact that her friends were howling with laughter at the audacity of her request made me pretty confident that they wouldn’t get used to this.

There’s so much more to write about this day, but if you are still reading this by now, I think you’re ready for me to quit. Plus, I still have to finish my ode to Dhaka.