Today was a busy day full of much walking and new sights. Kassandra recommended a nearby craft/art shop nearby called Jatra. On the first and second floors there was also Aranya, a shop that makes clothing using the natural dyes from Bangladesh. The stores (particularly Jatra) were full of some amazingly beauiful stuff - I took some pictures, but they will have to wait to be uploaded. At Jatra I bought a new handbag and some cards that I plan to frame and hang on the wall. The artists in this shop are the ones that did Kassandra's wall, and their stairways were painted with the design, as well as much of their handicraft (including my cards!). Their shopping bags are made from recycled newspaper and I absolutely loved them, such a clever idea!
After the shop I had planned in my head to finally drag my butt down to the old part of the city, in Bangla it's Puran Dhaka. I walked about 30 mins after the shop because it was nice out, and I caught a CNG to Puran Dhaka. I meant to start my day at the Banga Bazar, but of course there were a few more places I wanted to see as well. I do not have the art of "one destination in mind" down pat yet, so the universe keeps intervening with its own suggestions!
When I caught the CNG the driver didn't know where the market was, so I asked him to take me to tha national stadium and I could walk from there. When I first arrived I used to try and show them the map in my book, but now I know that the majority of drivers don't read English or Bangla - this also explains why they don't always know where they are either unless they have been there before and know it by sight. Re-educating myself again!
So as we passed the stadium (which is where I thought he was taking me!) I said ok ok, it's alright (my only Bangla, acha acha, tee-ga-say) the driver said "Bangla Bazar, okay!" and kept going. Hmmmm, thought my suspicious mind; either he just spontaneously remembered where it was, or he has though of a new market that he would be willing to BET was Banga Bazar... and on we drove.
I've (mostly) stopped arguing with the Universe, unless it freaks me out, so I sat back and we continued forward. I found myself shortly thereafter lined on both sides of the lane and both sides of the street by market stalls - a good old fashioned bazaar! It was SO busy, and there were many stalls selling everything from brooms to tshirts and tighty-whities to grapes. I rode on and on in ridiculously heavy traffic until we passed a hotel I'd thought to stay in if I went down to Old Dhaka - hey, this is waaay past Banga Bazar! Oh well, lol, I knew he didn't know where he was going anyway - maybe this will get me closer to the port and I can start the day from there!
So, we dodged horse-drawn carriages loaded with passengers, policemen, cars and other rickshaws and CNGs until he pulled into a quiter darker street also lined with shops. Think Diagon Alley from Harry Potter if you remember that, but sunlit without creepy people behind the doors, lol. "Bangla Bazar!" the driver proudly proclaimed with a big smile, sweeping his arm outward. I shook my head and smiled as I sorted through the money to pay the man and climbed out of the CNG with NO idea where I was.
I stood off to the side to avoid being run over and looked up the street to the right and down to the left. The air was heavy with the smell of spare engine parts. You know that greasy smell you get when you have your oil changed or you go to Napa for parts? Looking around pretty much all of the tiny shops in the narrow street were selling nuts, bolts, and greasy spare parts for god-knows-what. Shopkeepers were appropriately curious about the stranger foreign girl on their street, and only one young man on a bicycle crashed into a cart on the side of the path when he stopped watching where he was going (my score on this front now is 7 - 7 people have brought themselves to a sudden standstill while gawking at me in all my strangeness, lol - this is surprisingly not good for the ego: WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING PEOPLE!!!)
Well, I just came from up the street, might as well start down! Many "good morning"s later I reached the end of the street and came upon a big building with mosque-like features. I need to learn more about these buildings because I really don't understand what I"m looking at most of the times. I asked a passerby what it was and he told me it was the community centre, and he suggested I take many pictures (I took a few). He offered to take one of me but I didn't trust right off the bat that he wouldn't run off with my camera so I said "no thank you" and maneuvered around the building.
My new friend followed at a slight distance behind me, checking out the view in my camera screen. "My friend, my friend," was his answer to curious passersby that said something (something) to him. Sahid Khan (pronounced SaYed) toured me around the neighbourhood for the next couple of hours. Of course he introduced me as his friend to all of his brothers and uncles (Muslim men have a lot of these, I'm assuming same aged men are brothers, and older are uncles? and maybe it's not just a Muslim thing, but it's my best guess!). He walked me through narrow streets and pointed at things (and often of people) he thought I should take pictures of. We stopped at the small electric shop where he worked with his friends so I could take a picture of the shop and him with his friends. There was much many "ohhhh, friend, huh??" conversation at each new stop, to which I rolled my eyes and waved my hand at them.
Sahid asked me if I wanted to go down to Sanderghat (the port area) and of course I said yes, it was just a 10-minute amble from where we stood at the time. On the way he tried to lead me into a few small narrow streets because he wanted to introduce me to other friends in their homes, I had to keep explaining to him that I couldn't just go into a strange man's house - it's not proper for a married woman to enter another man's house, right? It took much conversation, but he finally relented and seemed to give in.
The streets all along the way were narrow and often hidden in shadow with many electrical wires drooping down from overhead. Piles of garbage lined the sides in many places, and it is coming to the point now where I hardly see either the garbage or the wires, and that's okay with me - they just are, they're a normal part of the scenery here. I refuse to toss my own trash to the ground and I still shake my finger at kids and adults that I am talking to when they do it, but I know I'm not going to change their thinking so it's only a half-hearted scolding. It's no wonder immigrants and visitors to Canada and the US think we have such clean countries, and they are amazed that the streets and countryside are (mostly) free from litter!
Women, children, women carrying babies, kids playing alone and in groups, and many many rickshaws fill these tiny streets. Men fill the shops (mostly as vendors, very few as customers). Many of the doors I'm passing are residential entrances rather than shops, and looking up there are many faces poking over the wall and out the windows as we get nearer the port.
Then in front of me is a man pushing a big cart of lumber, and we are in an area of small sawmills and stacks and piles of lumber either cut or waiting to be put to the saw. Here and there people asked me to take their picture and I happily obliged as they grouped themselves together and grinned (or suddenly became very serious).
We reached the end of the lane and finally I could see the water so I walked down the steps to a small little docking area with a bunch of small boats. Men yelled out and waved and made the international sign for "take a picture!" and I took a few more shots as I looked around the busy, dirty, crowded port.
Walking along again sawmills gave way to vegetable vendors, and endless baskets and piles of pumpkins, squashes, eggplants, onions, ginger, garlic and tomatoes lined both sides of the path. At times we had to pick our footing carefully or walk in the vegetables as many men and women walked by with baskets piled high atop their heads.
Sahid started serenading me about this time and I took a video of it and laughed as we walked along. Shortly after that he said , "Why you don't love me?" (he didn't care at all about the married angle apparently), and we had the conversation AGAIN about "if YOU had a wife and SHE went to another MAN's house...." and it ended in "Yes, I see, I see, it's bad, right, okay okay we're just friends. Girlfriend???" He managed to looked hurt at my mock outrage at having to keep explaining myself that I was NOT going to be his girlfriend and wasn't going to marry him, but it didn't keep him from asking now and again, kind of in that "How about now!?" fashion of children. Seriously, you can NOT propose to someone half hour after meeting them - WHY do I have to keep teaching men this lesson in my travels????!!
But, I digress. When he wasn't asking me to marry him and convert to Islam In šāʾ Allāh (and here I can tell you that whether or not god/Allah is willing, I am Not!) he was friendly company. After much walking he begged me to stop for a rest (he was tired from the hard work of walking, lol), and we walked to his shop for tea and cookies. A crowd formed in intervals after a few minutes (intervals because the shopkeepers kept shooing them onward, but new ones kept returning), and I drank my tea and ate chocolate biscuits that tasted a lot like Girl Guide cookies.
Once I'd had enough of being razzed by his friends we went on again, and this time I followed him into a book market. Now, it took a discussion with my inside voice on whether or not I wanted to follow him up the stairs (owing to the narrow passageway and the lack of light) but this girl goes by her gut and all was well, so up we went. Inside the warehouse-like building small wholesale booksellers were all scrunched in together side-by-side, with book wallahs running around with stacks piled high back down to the main street where they would sell them all. Sahid introduced me to his friends there (they were pleased and punch and very shy, and of course they asked me to take their pictures) and they shoved me onto a stool behind the front counter and we chatted awhile. Then Sahid said "5 minutes, bathroom break, I'll be back in 5 minutes!" I looked around the shop, a little dim, crowded with stacks of books and the friendly faces of his friends and said "5 minutes - and NOT Bangla 5 minutes, really 5 minutes!"
The shop manager sent one of the kids around the shop to pull every English book they had off the shelf so I could entertain myself while they worked, they were quite shy with their English. They asked if I wanted tea but I was fine without it so I politely declined. I had about 5 books in front of me (and truly, I have no idea who paid to have them published because they were quite terrible, lol). The best one was a cookbook of Bangladeshi foods written in both Bangla and English - I took a photo of his recipe for gingered beef because it looked delicious!
15 minutes passed and I'd flipped through all the books and got bored of waiting - there was much more to do outside before the sun went down and I had to rush home (no need to be out on the streets when the carriage turns back into a pumpkin and all that when the sun goes down!). After much discussion of cricket (Canada was playing Australia, we lost - boo!) and many compliments on what a lovely country Canada was and what a nice lady I was I told them I couldn't wait for Sahid any longer and asked them how to get back to the main street. Of course they pointed to the stairwell directly across that was (if it's even possible!!) even darker than the one we came up. I laughed and said "of course it's that way... thanks for the visit, enjoy your day!" and I padded down the dark stairwell lit by the flashlight I carry in my bag - handy, that thing!
Back out on the street I decided to just walk until I found something interesting, or until my feet fell off, whichever came first. Honestly just the people and streets are interesting for me so I didn't even mind that I didn't really know where I was in relation to the "sites to see" in the guidebook. So, I walked. I walked, and walked, and walked. I found many mosques, many crowded streets, one graveyard (two, but one I couldn't get in), and one burial room with a boy chanting. I watched some of the cricket game through a Sony store window (a first small then larger crowd reflected behind me in the glass as people stopped to watch me watch) until a commercial break, and then I walked on.
In one particularly crowded alley a car came careening around a corner (dangerous really, with all the people in the streets!) and nearly hit a rickshaw. To get out of the way of the car (the was coming down the street the wrong way) of course the rickshaw wallah swerved - right into me! I jumped sideways when he hit me (pretty much flat against the wall because I was already on the side of the street), and he skidded to a halt when his passenger told him he'd hit me (he didn't notice). A couple of grandmas on the street were shaking their fists at the wallah and yelling, and I just kept saying tee-ga-say, tee-ga-say, tee-ga-say, it's okay!
So, now I can say I have been hit by a rickshaw - I was fine, he just bumped my hip and leg with the back wheel and fender. I wear leggings under my skirts here so I was well-enough protected and all I got out of it was a bruise, there was nothing else he could have done. All good. It was the driver of the car that was at fault, but of course he was long gone causing trouble elsewhere by that point.
I wandered many darker narrow streets (they made me think that it was likely what it felt like to be an animal that lives in tunnels underground, an endless maze of streets running in every direction at odd angles) lined with busy people selling every manner of thing from light bulbs to rice to live baby chicks and scrap metal. I need to get a bit braver with my camera, as there were some good shots in there I neglected to take because I was running a bit low on patience (feeling hot, sweaty, bruised and crowded after about 4 hours of pretty steady walking).
Finally in all my walking I ended up at the place I'd meant to start at - Bango Bazar, much to my surprise!! Stalls and stuff and food and people E V E R Y W H E R E!! I was quite proud of myself that I'd managed to wander my way there, but by that time of day (the sun was getting pretty low by this time, maybe half hour from sunset) I was no longer in the mood for shopping, so I took some photos and decided it was time to find a CNG.
Ha, apparently around this place there WERE no CNGs, so I walked up the street I recognized from the ride in back toward where I'd started. In my travels I found the cricket stadium (which I detoured off path and walked around) and a big mosque. I stopped to buy a 7-up (hot and hungry, getting cranky - sugar is the answer!) and eat a piece of cake I had in my bag. When I complimented the woman at the counter on her many (many!) bracelets and paid for my drink, she took a few of them off and handed them to me, "It's my gift to you."
Only in Banglaesh, I swear.
I thanked the very nice woman and went back out the street with my 7-Up, in search of a ride home once more. I did find a couple of them, but neither was willing to make the long trip back to Gulshan-2 (and I have no idea why), so I walked on some more. By now the sun was actually going down and the sky was turning that lovely shade of pink. I really didn't want to be stuck out in an unfamiliar area after dark, so I was determined that the next CNG driver I found was taking me back home. And, thanks Universe, it was no problem after that, 30 seconds later I had my ride home into the sunset.
We did manage to get stopped by the police on the ride home. They pulled us over (I have no idea why, god knows he COULDN'T have been speeding!) and an officer asked me where we were coming from and where we were headed. The driver pushed the CNG over to the curb and walked back to the policemen. I sat for a few minutes (maybe 3?) before opening the door to ask the officers if there was a problem. "Oh, no madam, everything is okay, no problem" the officer said. He shoved some papers at the driver and shooed him back into the CNG and we were on our way again. I still have no idea what that was about.
Once we got started again the driver got a bit lost after we hit the main circle at Gulshan-2 (he was planning to take me to the northern-most part of the neighbourhood and I didn't want to go there!), and since I couldn't explain exactly what I meant in a way he could get what I meant I decided to walk the last half hour from there. The area is heavy with security and police, and of all things I was not at all worried about my security so I walked, and I arrived home safe and sound.
Fabulous day, photos to follow!
