Greetings from Chittagong, February 2008

Land of the biggest ship breaking yards in the world, rivers, Bangladesh’ies, rickshaws and all sorts of other colorful life.

Holy Cow “to coin a fraise” and believe me the cows in India are Holy, they lie in the middle of the road like lord Krishna himself, and no one dares to move them. I thought that I had seen just about everything, well I guess I got a long way to go. At present I am sitting on the train from “A” to “B” to unpronounceable places in Bangladesh. We crossed the border from India this morning and that in its self was an experience The most interesting border that we both have ever seen and crossed was on the border of the disputed territory of the Western Sahara in West Africa. A sand “pist” through the desert, brings one to a very old and dry stick, or branch, across one sand dune, and an old oil barrel. Next to the branch, is a hut, made of desert stones and sand, with a window the size of a golf ball, about three feet of the ground, and inside there is Mr. president himself, “passport !!

Alas “The road less traveled” is where we have just come from, the north east of India all “restricted area” including Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland all disputed and disrupted areas. Some of the places we traveled through, we had to have a very heavy army escort, men with big guns riding shotgun, bullet proof cars, vans or whatever one calls them. We drove through beautiful country side, seeing sites that we cannot describe, one being a river running through this valley with a water of blue that I have never seen. Very surreal! Tribal people coming out of the woods in their beautiful costumes, for those interested in anthropology, how come they look so much like the Indian tribal people we saw in the Amazon area?

Now we both know how it feels to be an animal in the zoo, the price for traveling to these places “less traveled” is that they have never seen white people, and Sabine with her long blond hair does not help either, boy do they stare. In the last two towns we stopped they told us that that had not seen white “tourists” ever! So when they get the opportunity to see one in real, just like they saw on TV, that’s us. In the Lonely Planet Guide book one of the Key Phrases they recommend is “please stop staring at me”!

We crossed into Bangladesh into a fairy tale like scene, there were no, 140 million Bangladeshis waiting for us, just a buggy or rickshaw, (three wheeler bicycle taxi) to take us into town, down a fantasy road tunneled with trees and paddy fields on each side. Sabine in her buggy and me following behind, I felt as if we were in Amish country. Six Kilometers into town and the biggest three wheeler bicycle traffic jam you can imagine. And they stared, Sabine told me to take a photo because no one would believe that there were 25 to 35 people standing around us, just staring, I remind her that we had that in some places in Africa. Boy we have been in some offices around the world, and one of the first things we had to do was change money, and get some Taka. Only one bank in town, and there we went. If one can call it a bank, first the clerk tried to rip us off, but the place looked 400 years old with old papers strewn everywhere, old broken furniture, half a million people, a little old lady bare feet up on the bunk in Sari, sitting like a chicken waiting for the worm, “is this the only bank in town”, “yes sir!” Welcome to Bangladesh!

So we manage to change some money into Taka and off to the station to buy a ticket for this magic train, “intercity” Now how does one buy a ticket in a country where they use a complete different alphabet and counting system, we had the same problem in China. We have a few hours to kill before the train leaves, and decide to visit the one horse town, (the horse died 62 years ago) and give the local people a show. And a show we gave them, stopping and joking (all in sign and body hand language). They loved it, we stopped to eat street food, they dared me to drink the local water, I did, and I am still alive, it tasted like shit. We walked through the town, and the market, and everyone had a great time. We then fought; bit, punched our way onto the train, I think I am missing a tooth. I then make a great show on the train; I lift up our bags to the Baggage rack and Wham! The whole rack comes crashing down, what a spectacle, so humiliating that we go and sit on the other side, nothing that a bit of wire did not fix, just like being back home in good old Zimbabwe. So here we are on the train in Bangladesh, our feet sunk deep in egg shells, peanut shells other unidentifiable things and garbage, half a million people trying to sell us any thing from the Holy Koran, to bonbons, to eggs, food stuffs from unknown origins, and amongst all this chaos and mess there comes the “tea master” dressed all in white, just like the good old colonial days, serving tea in porcelain cups and saucers, albeit his effort as good as it looks, in his almost black dirty not washed for four months, black / white uniform. Tea served in nice white porcelain cups, is expected to be drunk civilized, how do they expect us to even recuperate one sip of our tea, when the train is jumping up and down three feet at a time? last, but not least, the torta nijinas eyes peering out of a slit in black bourkas. And here like in India, they chew beetle, and they spit it out, here, there and everywhere, watch out for your feet, and they spit and they spit.

It seems that the whole world have their ships towed to this place, to be cut up by under aged children. We visited the worlds biggest ship breaking yards and saw whole ships, big ones, super tankers, cruse liners, and container ships, pulled up onto the beach and cut up with Gas torches, then sold off as scrap metal, to be melted down and reused.

Stay Tuned for the next episode!!