About 25 minutes after that I had eaten 2 cucumbers and a carrot (they are sold from big metal bowls fresh from somebody's garden - the wallah peels them and washes them off with bottled water), gotten myself a warm pepsi (did I mention that I take refrigeration for granted at home?), and walked around the station a bit waiting for my bus to be ready to go.
A young man in business wear came up early on in my wait and said he’d like to “discuss” me (turns out that meant he wanted to chat). He followed me onto the bus when my happy young ticket selling friend found me my seat, and he sat chatting with me about his upcoming job interview and various other things about Bangladesh.
He told me he wanted a “friend” and tried to convince me to give him my phone number in Canada.
I politely refused about 27 times and then finally told him "it would greatly upset my husband if I was just giving out my phone number to men all over Bangladesh while I was travelling without him. How would you feel if you were married and your wife came home bringing men's phone numbers?"
"Oh, you are right miss, not good, not good." After the 26th time (and several further clever attempts of “I can be BOTH friends, you AND your husband, it‘s okay!!) I think he got the point (laughing and smiling all the while), and the 27th came as he was on his way out the door in one final attempt that still got him no luck. “But you will forget me when you go to Canada. I should have your phone number, please?” Sorry dude, I don’t even have a phone number...
So, the bus gets going, we’re all in our seats (about 20 of us when the bus probably sits about 45) and the driver and his 3 wallahs start jockeying for position to get OUT of the freakin’ station. Buses are nose to nose, some bumper to tire, all of them trying to get out first ahead of the other like they all suddenly decided to leave at exactly the same time. MAN I hope I took some video of it, because it was CRAZY!
About 10 minutes, much bus slapping, yelling, and fist-shaking later the bus pulled away from the terminal and crossed into the insane traffic I’d hopped to get there in the first place.
We approached the curb, and the 3 boys who had been staring and giggling at me once we started to move leaped out of their seats, opened windows and one of them stood in the door yelling out “Birisiri! Birisiri! Birisiri!” and trying to attract more customers onto the bus. We did this the ENTIRE way north, the yelling, the honking, the insanity, it was a LONG ride!
About 4 hours into it I considered all of the stopping and starting and figured we were going to be about 2 hours behind schedule, and that it was likely I was going to be arriving in the dark.
Awesome.
Every once in a bit Smiley checked in on me, and when we were on the highway between yelling positions he checked to see if I was hungry or needed anything through charades - patting his tummy and making a sad face then pointing back and forth between me and his tummy... man he made me laugh, he was very cute.
We pulled off the highway twice for rest stops, and each time (since the interior lights were on, and I was in the front seat) a crowd gathered at the front and door to gawk. I didn’t get off the bus because I didn’t want to get lost, so I just stayed there getting stared at and hid behind my sunglasses in the evening light. It got dark sooner than later and then we were careening down the highway at full tilt in the dark - at this point I decided it was in my best interest NOT to watch the action through the front window to avoid giving myself more gray hair. Instead I read my guidebook some more.
When we finally hit Mymensingh I figured we were about an hour away - not bad, we’d be there around 730 or so, I could handle that! Hah, no way Jose, we still had 3 hours to go, little did I know!
About 6 hours into the drive (after the 2nd rest stop) the driver pulled the bus over to the side of the road, stood up and waved his hands in a cutting motion and went and sat in one of the chairs. We were not in a rest area, we were just partially pulled off the road and he was NOT budging from the chair, rubbing his hip (I thought: ouch, that looks like sciatica badness).
Okay, the driver is done with driving now, so we're just sitting in the dark on the side of the road.
Awesome. (this is a very useful word!)
After much heated debate, one of the young ticket boys climbed into the driver’s chair and started the bus going again. He had a hard time with the stick to the point that I was pretty sure he’d never driven a bus before, and I found myself praying in the dark for a safe arrival and avoidance of all cliffs that were surely to continue on the roads ahead.
I was wondering at this point about the part in the guidebook that mentioned “a good part of the drive across bumpy unpaved backroards” and thought that the roads must have been cleaned up since they wrote 2 years ago because we were almost there and we hadn’t hit much in the way of unpaved roads (unless you count the narrow dirt and sometimes sand shoulders the bus was forced onto each time a huge truck came in the other direction taking up half our lane, but I‘m choosing to forget about all those times!).
Me and my big mouth (inside voice or not, the universe is ALWAYS listening!).
The universe delivered again, and before I knew it the double-laned paved roads gave way to a single-lane sometimes-dirt sometimes-paved with huge holes kind of pathway, and the new young driver decided to slow on down to about 40km/hr, white knuckled but still toughing it out.
Was he just nervous about driving in the dark? Could he even see anything with the substandard headlights and the heaps of oncoming rikshaws and bicycles and HUGE trucks? Do Bangladesh roads have pirates? I don’t know about HIM, but *I* was becoming a silent wreck from my seat directly behind him.
I pulled my scarf back up over my head and leaned back in my seat trying to look anywhere but out into the dark in front of me.
About half an hour into the crawl a man stood up halfway down the aisle and started a huge yelling screaming match. Smiley became quite angry, as did the other men at the front of the bus, and I pulled my scarf up over my hair again (I was just starting to relax!) and sank a bit deeper into my chair staying out of the way as the bus once again came to a halt on the side of the road.
I’m *guessing* from the tone and gesticulations involved (I watched the scene from the driver’s big bubble rear-view mirror) that he was angry we were going so slow. I myself wanted him to shut the hell up unless he was gonna drive because the boy was doing the best he could, but this fight went on screaming and spitting red-faced for 10 minutes before finally the calmer men (some grandpas in Muslim dress) put seat to the more wired men and we continued on our crawl with everyone a little tense, but alive.
Many of these things are also loaded to the brim with various cargos like pointy bamboo spears, iron dowling rods, and piles of hay you can’t see past. This makes driving and passing in the dayLIGHT a tough enough job.
Take the 2-laned road and pare it down to one, add sandy shoulders and at other times remove the shoulders all together, and then make it night.
Are you feelin’ me?
I found myself praying.
Again.
Not bargaining, just praying.
And hey, whatdoyouknow - I remember my Hail Mary and my Our Father - thank you Catholic School!!
We got through it all, with fewer and fewer people on the bus as we passed each little town and village along the way losing and gaining passengers to the last minute.
The driver put on a CD of hindi pop and looked back at me about 3 songs in to see me tapping my foot and starting to relax (me and everyone else, probably… well, except the old guys, I think they would have preferred silence and speediness).
He turned around and gave me the thumbs up about 3 times while gesturing in the directions of the music coming from the speakers and I smiled and nodded, yes I was enjoying the music. He gave me thumbs up again in the mirror and to my relief turned back to the road again.
Finally about 20 minutes later we pulled into what could only be Birisiri as the driver snugged the bus up in a big snuggly buspile in front of some tiny snack stands and market stalls, turned off the lights and then the engine and the remaining few passengers got off.
 |
| Mr Excitable is in the red looking serious |
A young man in business wear came up early on in my wait and said he’d like to “discuss” me (turns out that meant he wanted to chat). He followed me onto the bus when my happy young ticket selling friend found me my seat, and he sat chatting with me about his upcoming job interview and various other things about Bangladesh.
He told me he wanted a “friend” and tried to convince me to give him my phone number in Canada.
I politely refused about 27 times and then finally told him "it would greatly upset my husband if I was just giving out my phone number to men all over Bangladesh while I was travelling without him. How would you feel if you were married and your wife came home bringing men's phone numbers?"
"Oh, you are right miss, not good, not good." After the 26th time (and several further clever attempts of “I can be BOTH friends, you AND your husband, it‘s okay!!) I think he got the point (laughing and smiling all the while), and the 27th came as he was on his way out the door in one final attempt that still got him no luck. “But you will forget me when you go to Canada. I should have your phone number, please?” Sorry dude, I don’t even have a phone number...
And because EVERYONE in Bangladesh has a cell phone, he thought I was lying - but how to explain this gypsy life to people I have no idea!
So, the bus gets going, we’re all in our seats (about 20 of us when the bus probably sits about 45) and the driver and his 3 wallahs start jockeying for position to get OUT of the freakin’ station. Buses are nose to nose, some bumper to tire, all of them trying to get out first ahead of the other like they all suddenly decided to leave at exactly the same time. MAN I hope I took some video of it, because it was CRAZY! 
About 4 hours into it I considered all of the stopping and starting and figured we were going to be about 2 hours behind schedule, and that it was likely I was going to be arriving in the dark.
Awesome.
Every once in a bit Smiley checked in on me, and when we were on the highway between yelling positions he checked to see if I was hungry or needed anything through charades - patting his tummy and making a sad face then pointing back and forth between me and his tummy... man he made me laugh, he was very cute.
When we finally hit Mymensingh I figured we were about an hour away - not bad, we’d be there around 730 or so, I could handle that! Hah, no way Jose, we still had 3 hours to go, little did I know!
About 6 hours into the drive (after the 2nd rest stop) the driver pulled the bus over to the side of the road, stood up and waved his hands in a cutting motion and went and sat in one of the chairs. We were not in a rest area, we were just partially pulled off the road and he was NOT budging from the chair, rubbing his hip (I thought: ouch, that looks like sciatica badness).
 |
| This picture is not mine, but this is what many buses here look like! |
Awesome. (this is a very useful word!)
After much heated debate, one of the young ticket boys climbed into the driver’s chair and started the bus going again. He had a hard time with the stick to the point that I was pretty sure he’d never driven a bus before, and I found myself praying in the dark for a safe arrival and avoidance of all cliffs that were surely to continue on the roads ahead.
I was wondering at this point about the part in the guidebook that mentioned “a good part of the drive across bumpy unpaved backroards” and thought that the roads must have been cleaned up since they wrote 2 years ago because we were almost there and we hadn’t hit much in the way of unpaved roads (unless you count the narrow dirt and sometimes sand shoulders the bus was forced onto each time a huge truck came in the other direction taking up half our lane, but I‘m choosing to forget about all those times!).
Me and my big mouth (inside voice or not, the universe is ALWAYS listening!).
The universe delivered again, and before I knew it the double-laned paved roads gave way to a single-lane sometimes-dirt sometimes-paved with huge holes kind of pathway, and the new young driver decided to slow on down to about 40km/hr, white knuckled but still toughing it out.
Was he just nervous about driving in the dark? Could he even see anything with the substandard headlights and the heaps of oncoming rikshaws and bicycles and HUGE trucks? Do Bangladesh roads have pirates? I don’t know about HIM, but *I* was becoming a silent wreck from my seat directly behind him.
I pulled my scarf back up over my head and leaned back in my seat trying to look anywhere but out into the dark in front of me.
About half an hour into the crawl a man stood up halfway down the aisle and started a huge yelling screaming match. Smiley became quite angry, as did the other men at the front of the bus, and I pulled my scarf up over my hair again (I was just starting to relax!) and sank a bit deeper into my chair staying out of the way as the bus once again came to a halt on the side of the road. I’m *guessing* from the tone and gesticulations involved (I watched the scene from the driver’s big bubble rear-view mirror) that he was angry we were going so slow. I myself wanted him to shut the hell up unless he was gonna drive because the boy was doing the best he could, but this fight went on screaming and spitting red-faced for 10 minutes before finally the calmer men (some grandpas in Muslim dress) put seat to the more wired men and we continued on our crawl with everyone a little tense, but alive.
Jeepers guys, stress me out a little MORE why don't you??
So I've mentioned before that Bangladesh roads are littered with rickshaws, CNGs, cars, vans, buses, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles all heading somewhere. There are also random goats (everywhere) and cows and the occasional sheep with lambs followed by chickens wandering the roads at weill. This is all true in the city and out of it - out of it there are far more farm-like loads of hay and bamboo poles and sacks of greens, carts over-laden and loads toppling to the side in the breeze.
Many of these things are also loaded to the brim with various cargos like pointy bamboo spears, iron dowling rods, and piles of hay you can’t see past. This makes driving and passing in the dayLIGHT a tough enough job. Take the 2-laned road and pare it down to one, add sandy shoulders and at other times remove the shoulders all together, and then make it night.
Are you feelin’ me?
Again.
Not bargaining, just praying.
And hey, whatdoyouknow - I remember my Hail Mary and my Our Father - thank you Catholic School!!
We got through it all, with fewer and fewer people on the bus as we passed each little town and village along the way losing and gaining passengers to the last minute.
The driver put on a CD of hindi pop and looked back at me about 3 songs in to see me tapping my foot and starting to relax (me and everyone else, probably… well, except the old guys, I think they would have preferred silence and speediness).
He turned around and gave me the thumbs up about 3 times while gesturing in the directions of the music coming from the speakers and I smiled and nodded, yes I was enjoying the music. He gave me thumbs up again in the mirror and to my relief turned back to the road again.
Finally about 20 minutes later we pulled into what could only be Birisiri as the driver snugged the bus up in a big snuggly buspile in front of some tiny snack stands and market stalls, turned off the lights and then the engine and the remaining few passengers got off.
I really wasn't keen about getting off the bus, I was happy hanging out with the little cockroaches when I looked out the window to see all the people standing around doing nothing outside. I asked the newly appointed driver, “This is Birisiri, right?”
“Yes. We party now?”
“Umm, noooo… thanks though - good job driving!” and I hopped off the bus and into the sea of curious onlookers.
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