Hi folks and hello from Dhaka.
It has been an eventful couple of days getting here and I am totally exhausted and jetlagged, 11 hours in airports and 13 hours in the air I could sleep for a week, seeing 3 sunrises in two days was a bit trippy but we made it eventually.
Arrival at the airport was a complicated process especially trying to get our visas, luckily there are people who are willing to get all the paper work sorted for you, (for a small fee of course).
So far all we have seen of the city is from the hour long car drive from the airport to our accommodation which was amazing in itself as well as being pretty scary, extremely noisy and even heartbreaking, as soon as the car stopped in traffic the car was set upon by young children begging and woman with starving babys, they are extremely nice, they want to shake hands and give gifts but they are VERY persistant and you have to just wind up the window and ignore them, if we could we would give them some money but the car would have been swarmed as soon as we did.
The scary part is the lack of rules, its hard to comprihend how the roads opperate, there are no lanes, no traffic signal, people even drive on the opposite side of the road.
I spent as much of the journey trying taking snapshots from the car window, traffic is heavy so it was difficult to get anything but buses and tuktuks and the noise is unbelievable! The cars don't use indicators, they use there horns, the city air is filled with the orchestra of car horns and rickshaw bells ringing.
we got to our rooms mid afternoon and after sending a couple e-mail and loading some photos onto my laptop I just crashed out, but with my bodyclock being messed up I woke again at 3 am local time and havn't been able to get to sleep since, the one time I started to drop off I was awoken by the prayers played out through the loud speakers all throughout the city.
We are currently awaiting the arrival of the Pathshala students at the hotel but have yet to hear from them today so we are playing the waiting game!
In the mean time here are a few photos from the drive to our hotel, they arn't fantastic but with less than 3 hours since 7.30 monday morning my brain had turned to mush and it id difficult to concentrate on the most basic tasks. I have more but I will upload them once I have done some editing.
It has been an eventful couple of days getting here and I am totally exhausted and jetlagged, 11 hours in airports and 13 hours in the air I could sleep for a week, seeing 3 sunrises in two days was a bit trippy but we made it eventually.
Arrival at the airport was a complicated process especially trying to get our visas, luckily there are people who are willing to get all the paper work sorted for you, (for a small fee of course).
So far all we have seen of the city is from the hour long car drive from the airport to our accommodation which was amazing in itself as well as being pretty scary, extremely noisy and even heartbreaking, as soon as the car stopped in traffic the car was set upon by young children begging and woman with starving babys, they are extremely nice, they want to shake hands and give gifts but they are VERY persistant and you have to just wind up the window and ignore them, if we could we would give them some money but the car would have been swarmed as soon as we did.
The scary part is the lack of rules, its hard to comprihend how the roads opperate, there are no lanes, no traffic signal, people even drive on the opposite side of the road.
I spent as much of the journey trying taking snapshots from the car window, traffic is heavy so it was difficult to get anything but buses and tuktuks and the noise is unbelievable! The cars don't use indicators, they use there horns, the city air is filled with the orchestra of car horns and rickshaw bells ringing.
we got to our rooms mid afternoon and after sending a couple e-mail and loading some photos onto my laptop I just crashed out, but with my bodyclock being messed up I woke again at 3 am local time and havn't been able to get to sleep since, the one time I started to drop off I was awoken by the prayers played out through the loud speakers all throughout the city.
We are currently awaiting the arrival of the Pathshala students at the hotel but have yet to hear from them today so we are playing the waiting game!
In the mean time here are a few photos from the drive to our hotel, they arn't fantastic but with less than 3 hours since 7.30 monday morning my brain had turned to mush and it id difficult to concentrate on the most basic tasks. I have more but I will upload them once I have done some editing.
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| Rickshaw decoration is an art form here |
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Bamboo Scaffolding |
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| Oncoming Traffic |
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| An entire family crammed into a tiny TukTuk |
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| Our driver from the airport. He didn't speak to us once |
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| An elderly man carries an old blind cripple on his sholder. |
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| Constant begging along the jouney gave an instant into the poverty |
Andy,
ReplyDeleteIt all sounds fantastic! Look forward to your updates. Alex