Bangladesh river boats

I am sure at the present moment that about one-third of the country called Bangladesh must be under water. There is water everywhere. As we drove we saw it on either side, the rivers are wide and there is more water on the other side of the embankments. It is no wonder that boats are the most important form of transport in this country. Mind you, some of the sights I saw also showed why it can be so dangerous, such overloaded boats have to be seen to be believed. Spending many hours travelling up and down the river, a huge variety of boats was seen The following photographs show a few.

Here is a river passenger boat, that is not dreadfully overloaded.

This is the smoke stack of an ocean going ship that was at the port of Mongla.

This is the typical type of boat used by the villagers, made of wood and propelled with a wooden oar. here it is being used to transport freshly cut grass.

However, the majority of the boats we saw on the river were fishing boats like the one below. They usually contained 3 or 4 people - one at the back to steer, two at the from to paddle and one in the middle to put out (or bring in) the fishing nets.

This is one of the overloaded boats as seen in Khulna where it ferries people from one side of the river to the other.

Here are the wood cutters on their boat at the river mouth with the Bay of Bengal in the background.

This is another passenger boat but not overloaded this time.

This shows the contrasts of the boats found on the river - a small wooden boat with the side on an ocean-going, cement carrying ship in the background.

And this is one of the more modern boats, a coast guard vessel near Mongla.

Here is a barge being pushed along by another boat.