Beyond the city limits

There is nothing like hard work to make me antsy.  Actually, if I just think about traveling (like I am right now), my leg starts twitching a little bit, and I get hungry.  For adventure.  And since I'm at North End Coffee while writing this, a brownie to tie me over for the time being.

So, out at dinner with my friend Tawsif last week, I said, "I'm taking time off.  Where should I go?"  "How about Sylhet?"  I like it.  Sylhet is one of Bangladesh's six divisions (like a state), and if Bangladesh is a Eastern (right?) facing pacman, it's the top of the pacman's mouth.  I could also tell you it's by the border with India, but since we're like 90% surrounded by India, that would not be helpful.  It's tea country and considered by some to be the prettiest part of the country.  Perfect for detaching myself from my laptop and doing some sociological exploring for a few days.  Tawsif seems to think so too, so he decides to end his five year streak of not leaving Dhaka to join me (my legs start twitching like crazy at the mere thought of staying anywhere that long!).

As a gemini, my element is air, but the longer I'm here, the more I think that water is more accurate.  Maybe that's just because there's an increasing amount of it for me to reckon with these days.  But, water is smart, it takes the path of least resistance.  This pretty much sums up my traveling strategy.  I avoid decision-making to whatever extent possible.  In this case, my traveling companion arranged bus tickets, hotel accommodations, etc.  All I had to do was pack my backpack and show up at the bus stop.  To buy my ticket (because e-tickets don't exist for plane or much less bus at this point) around 5PM for a midnight departure.  This is down in Motijeel, which seems a bit epic of a journey to go just to buy a ticket when you're in an auto-rickshaw (CNG cage), but when we take a rickshaw back up to Gulshan, it's pleasant and takes us through a lot of those windy backroads that are almost too narrow for cars, which doesn't mean that the traffic is less chaotic, but at least there are no honking horns.

A few hours and tacos al pastor later (Unexpected surprise: the mexican resturant El Toro in Dhaka is really tasty!  Could make the chicken quesadilla cheesier, but otherwise, no complaints), we're back at the bus stop.  While waiting for the bus, to Tawsif's horror, I roll up my capris pants to show him the horrible bruises I have from this week's football matches.  Evidently showing my calves is ok; bare knees cross the line.  Luckily all 30 or so of us that are sitting there feeling awkward now have the opportunity to board the bus together and not make eye contact.  I slide into a window seat and manage to wait until the bus has pulled away from the curb to fall fast asleep.  I swear I sleep better while in motion than any other time.  Around 5AM, my eyes open briefly and catch sight of the dawn.  I manage to keep them open on and off for the next hour; Bangladesh must be the flattest country in the world, so it's green and flat with a beautiful sunrise.  

My camera is broken--this picture from flikr, taken in 2006.
Looks about the same 5 years later; lungi fashion has not really advanced....

Sylhet is quiet when we roll in an hour later.  The produce vendors are getting set up for the day.  There are a lot of pumpkins.  The jackfruits (ketal) keep getting bigger and just more and more ridiculous looking.  And lychee!  Lychee have become an anytime food for me, and since you buy them in bunches of 50, you have to be prepared to eat a lot in a short period of time (for best taste, all should be consumed in 24 hours--not necessary a great idea, stomach-wise).  But, we need to get to our guest house before I'm allowed to start haggling about fruit.  We hop in another auto-rickshaw and head out of the city limits to a hotel on a hill, surrounded by farmland.  Once we've dropped our stuff in the room, we head out to wander around and bother the villagers.  More than one comes out to stare at me, and a few even bring cameras and ask me to pose (or don't and just snap pictures).  Somehow I get on the topic of Harvard's brand recognition (I claim confidently that everyone in the entire universe has heard of Harvard), and Tawsif calls me on it.  We ask two guys tilling a field, "Do you know where Harvard University is?"  The first looks at us blankly and with the disdain of someone who has important things to do, the second furrows his brow, then says confidently, "Yes.  It's just next to the bazar in Sylhet."  Alright, fine.  Not everyone has heard of Harvard.  But we are still doing way better than Yale.

So much for my plan of dropping the H-bomb. 

Curious about the bazar and Harvard, we head into town that afternoon.  The produce that we saw in the morning has all been sold and the stands are dismantled.  The weather has cooled to a pleasant warmth, and the traffic is conducive to just hopping in a rickshaw and letting the driver determine the course.  We hop out here and there to check out a store, ducking off the main road onto some of those quiet smaller paths when we see them.  Pace of life is slower; I can feel the tensed readiness for motion that all urban dwellers have slowly leaving my system; here, you can breathe a bit deeper, linger a little longer.  We linger over some fantastic biriyani (rice with sweet-ish spices and a bit of meat) and finally purchase some lychee, which I promptly get to work on right away.

Y'all are going to laugh, but it's really not every day that I have an opportunity to watch the sunset FROM A HILLTOP.  Seriously, this is the first hill I've seen in months; it feels great to get that elevated perspective, and there's nothing in the distance to obscure the view at all.  Green trees, pools of water here and then, neat squares of crops scattered around, even an occasional football pitch.  Hard to say if I'm more excited by the hill or the sunset, or just not working (let's be honest, I'm normally in the office during this time and my window faces due north).

The hilling powers of tea country (flikr: Ariful Bhuiyan)

The next day is sufficiently lazy that there is little to report.  I was pleased to find out that our hotel has coffee--I was unaware that you could make foam from powdered milk, but I'm pretty sure that's what they did.  And also have accepted the fact that I am quite happy drinking nescafe.  Snob I am not, especially if they are liberal with the sugar.  Getting my coffee at the same time as my breakfast (paratha--thick, oily, delicious flaky tortilla-like bread--fried egg, and veg curry) actually is the bigger challenge--whether it's the fact that the same person makes both or they object to me consuming them at the same time is unclear.  But I face the same problem at lunch.  Though the nice thing about vacation is that I can linger over a cup of coffee after lunch, especially when I'm looking out at the hill (!!), which is covered with jungle foliage, and occasionally have a monkey jump up on the windowsill to check me and my cup of coffee out.

There are little things that I love about Bangladesh but often fail to appreciate out loud.  We may not be able to buy our bus tickets online, but when we fail to show up for our 8:30AM bus, they give us a call and hold the bus for ten minutes so that we aren't left behind.  It's been raining since about 10PM the night before and the fields are all flooded.  I stare out the window a lot, fighting off that motion-induced urge to nap with short-lived success.  I wake up when the bus stops and am wide awake as soon as Tawsif mentions breakfast.  Thing #2 that I love about Bangladesh: if you like bengali dishes (which I do), you can get delicious meals just about anywhere.  In this bus stop, we get piping hot paratha and veg.  The kitchuri looks good too, but I'm not quite awake enough to manage the dexterity required to eat rice and dal with my (right) hand.  Next time.  Alas, the bus stop also appears to be out of coffee.  I take this as a sign that I'm destined to make a late afternoon run to North End since otherwise I'll have to go the whole week without cinnamon rolls and that just sounds brutal.

For perhaps the first time, getting back to Dhaka feels like getting home.  I swing by North End with my backpack before heading to my apartment, and run into the British guy that I have a standing Saturday morning cinnamon roll date with (although I have some explaining to do today since I'd sent him an SMS canceling and well, here I was eating a cinnamon roll when he walks in the door).  On the walk home, I run into yet another British guy I play soccer with.  Starting to feel like a small town!

And today, back at work in the midst of a 36-hour hartal, again over this issue of the constitutionality of a caretaker government.  I find traveling to be a double edge sword; on the one hand, it is incredibly energizing and allows me to come back to work with renewed vigor, but on the other hand, it feeds on itself: nothing makes me crave travel like doing some traveling.  Leg twitchiness begins again (don't worry, I'm in long pants today so no knees are exposed).