There were swimmers, young and old but always male, baithing in every
pond or flood backwater. The water was fetted but they were not deterred.
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Bangladesh tries very hard to act like a modern nation. It struggles mightily
to keep up appearances. This is The national park. It is still used by
rice farmers and breadfruit growers but people still come to hike and fish.
They hike everywhere anyway, and fish everywhere anyway, but they are very
proud of their park anyway.
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Preceeding the monsoon, the winds became very strong. Here it blows a brama
cow back across the road and stops traffic. It WAS the wind that stopped the
cars.
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Every day that we traveled north we crossed this toll bridge over a tributary
to the Ganga (Gangies). The toll was very high, about 50 cents ($20 to a Bangla)
and few could afford to cross.
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The toll guards stopped us twice a day until I finally made a deal with them to
only stop us once a week. We paid a premium in addition to the toll and I
gave them all copies of their pictures.
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Here I am, making a new friend. I paid her owner 20 Taka to have our pictures
taken. There was always someone walking their livestock beside the road. We stopped
here because we had a flat tire.
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This particular bridge always had a group of boys (and men) crouched on the parapet,
often quite naked, often leaping into the water below.
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At most crossroad corners there would be a hut which served as the country
store for the neighborhood. The moto was a rare thing. These guys must have
been rich.
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Bangladesh was struggling to become food and energy self-sufficient. They rotated
three crops a year through their paddies. At first they almost had enough but production
dropped drastically as the soil wore out and now they never have been self-sufficient and
the soil is ruined. People often starve.
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Here I am, posing by a disused paddy. You can't see it but I'm looking at
a two truck accident that ended up in the water. No one was hurt too badly.
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We didn't see many elephants but this one had been loading logs onto the ferry we
had just left. This was his (its) lunch break - banana tree trunks.
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This was a working elephant and none too friendly. The mahout threw rocks at
people who came too close. Still, there was quite a crowd.
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One day we came across two busses stopped beside the road with a large crowd of men
blocking the road. We inched by...
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when a large mean man in a uniform started hitting anyone on the roof he could reach with
his stick. We pulled on by and I got out to take his picture. He became adgitated and
confiscated my camera and made threats. I flattered him into letting me take his picture
and I actually sent him copies. I've lost his name but he was very proud of being a member
of the Bangla Olympic team in Madrid - weight lifting.
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He left and we hung around to see what happened. This is one of my favorite
shots of the whole trip. It is of the last of the busses to finally pull out.
It is illegal to ride outside a bus in Bangladesh.
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