A Bangladesh Adventure: The Slow.w.w.w.w. trip home today

Each morning I get picked up at 6.40 am by a school van to be taken to school. The trip usually takes about 25 minutes. Then in the evening I get a van home, usually at 3.45 or 4.15, which usually takes about 45 minutes depending on how many stops there are and where they are. I always get picked up first in the morning and dropped off last in the afternoon!

But today, being the first day of Ramadan it was another story. The 1 kilometre from school out to the main road took half an hour as we stopped and started and crawled along. It starts of 2 lanes then narrows to one with lots of rickshaws and CNGs darting along the edges. Then we couldn't turn right into the diplomatic area to drop one person off. Well it took about 15 minutes. Then got stuck at another intersection for must have been about another 15 minutes. At that stage, after one and a quarter hours, I got out and walked the 2 kilometres home, or a 20 minute walk. I think it would have taken at least half an hour had I waited for the van to get through the traffic. It made the traffic in Morocco look insignificant.

At least I made it eventually but the nice thing while walking was to see all the women dressed in their best, brightly coloured saris and salwa kameez for the first day of Ramadan. There was aqua, red, orange, yellow and lipstick pink, with scarves in a contrasting colour, it was like walking through a moving rainbow. Everyone was walking fast, in a rush to get home to break fast when the sunset, which is about 6 here. They have the dates and sweet pastries here like in Morocco but no soup. Interestingly, most the secondary Bangadeshi kids at school fast.

So bored did I get on the trip home, I got out my camera to take a few photos, through the van windows I might add. Here's a few:

The traffic jam