29 reasons why srimongal is awesome, or reliving my tea-nage years

Is my life on track?
So it seems.

  It's official!  I'm an old lady!  At 29, I can't even claim mid-20s anymore.  How did time go so fast?  I keep having those moments of panic like, "Am I that weird old person at the bar/party/cub that I used to think was so sketchy and weird for being here?!" or thinking that perhaps it's finally time to get rid of all clothes that I bought in high school. Otherwise I should probably stop making fun of Mike Pareles (who coincidentally, turned the ripe old age of 28 on Thursday!!) for wearing ratty old t-shirts.  And I just can't give that up.  Just like I am totally NOT giving up Taylor Swift music (never ever ever....).
I found out earlier this month that we had Thursday off from work--evidently it was also Buddha's birthday.  Once I realized we had a three day weekend, planning kicked in.  Another trip to Srimongal, my favorite getaway in Bangladesh, was long overdue.  Naveed and Shazzad immediately agreed to go with me, and then we coerced Boshir bhai into coming with us.   This was critical--Naveed is my bff(n) (Either best friend forever, or best friend for now, depending on the situation) and we have a tendency to gang up on Shazzad.  Boshir bhai always takes Shazzad's side, so it a.) means that we can engage in trivial debates for longer, and b.) meant that Naveed wouldn't feel like a third wheel (he might even have someone to hold hands with, but more on that later).  Boshir bhai has this last second wave of doubt and indecision, at which point Naveed and I really strong armed him with as much guilt, excitement, and intimidation as we could muster between the two of us.
On Thursday morning, I wake up to the sweet music of rain.  I go out on my balcony and watch the people on the street.  I admire that so many pedestrians are totally unfazed by the rain.  They don't run, they don't walk fast, they just walk while getting soaking wet.  Rickshaw drivers have pulled out their plastic Peter Pan hands, and plastic sheets for those driving in the rickshaws to cover themselves with.  I'm so caught up in the romance of the scene, it doesn't really dawn on me that this is probably not great roadtrip weather.  Luckily it's slowed by the time we take off, and we've rented a sturdy van with a surprisingly reliable driver for the journey.  The journey still takes longer than it had the times I'd gone before (about 7 hours, including all of our stops for food, fuel, and tea), but there's no comparison between the comfort of traveling in a van and the non-AC bus.  I'm just glad I've taken the non-AC bus enough to have a sense of how truly luxurious this type of travel is!

Boshir bhai had two talents that revealed themselves on the trip.  The first is that he travels with a camera and takes lots of snaps.  So, you'll find that this trip was much better documented than some of my others (like my mountain biking adventure the other day!!).  You can see the full album with captions here.
It turned out that Boshir bhai also has a lovely voice and a large repertoire of Lalon songs.  I am the wrong person to explain Lalon, but he is a legendary figure in Bengali music, one of the most famous Baul musician.  It's beautiful when you see it in an auditorium, but it's best enjoyed under the moonlight.  Instruments are helpful, but the acappella version is nice too.  There are festivals during the full moon in Lalon's hometown (??) of Kustia, to the west of Dhaka.  We happened to go to Srimongal during a blazing full moon, so were enjoy this amazing combination of music and ambiance.  Walking through a tea garden at midnight, with no signs of human life as far as the eye can see.  That's about as good as it gets.  It's cool to see a town like Srimongal changing.  There is a new trendy restaurant in town that serves chicken tikka, garlic nan, lassis, etc.  It reminds me of a new restaurant in Dhaka that's hot right now.   I even spot cans of diet coke for sale in one corner store; a clear sign of development (and diabetes!).  The five star hotel with a golf course is another sign of the growing wealth to be spent.  What next?

If you just say "tea," they assume you meant really sweet.
Feels like home.

I"m finding that Bangladesh never lets you savor something completely without a tinge of a special surprise flavor popping up.  The traffic back to Dhaka is unbelievable.  We had hoped that the announcement that there would be a hartal (political demonstration) would mean that a lot of folks would stay out of Dhaka an extra day, meaning that we could beat the traffic.  Ha!  We forgot to account for the possibility that there would be construction on a water pipe that crossed the highway, which created an informal road block and shrinking from "4 lane" (I'm counting the pedestrians, rickshaws, bicycles, and wheelbarrows as their own lanes).  Watching how traffic moves into complete and irreversible gridlock in these situations makes me think of that science experiment to explain density--where you start by putting pebbles in a cup, then sand, then water, and you see how the smaller particles can squeeze into places that the bigger ones can't.  That's essentially what happened--once the buses and the trucks are stuck, the cars, then the motorcycles and three-wheels move in, and eventually streams of people on foot start moving through.  It would be entertaining except for the fact that it means that almost everyone will be stuck for the next few hours while we try to get out of the super efficient gridlock we've created!  When our driver ends up on the wrong side of the road after getting passed by many, many vehicles on the wrong side of the road, and comes head to head with an angry truck driver and an even more harried police officer who has finally showed up to help sort of the traffic problem, I do what I can to help: put on dark sunglasses and act like I'm someone very important from UNDP or some other diplomatic institution that makes me a VIP in the situation.  It works enough that we're allowed to merge instead of backing up indefinitely.  Our driver is also screaming his head off at the drivers around us, which might also have done the trick.  I decide not to question the ethics of any of this too deeply; it is, after all, a Saturday afternoon after low-key relaxing in a tea garden.  And, I'm distracted by my quest to find people selling lychee by the side of the road.  And take photographs of Naveed who keeps falling asleep in the back seat.