Village life

The trip to Sonargaon was also an opportunity to wander through villages and get a look into life there. Here's a few pictures to give you an idea:

Here is the local poultry farm, with the boys below the ones who look after them.


A Horlick's sign!

Here is a stupa near one of the villages, hidden amongst a clump of trees and surrounded by rice paddies.

A group of curious children who talked with us and followed us while we were wandering through the village.

Cricket scoreboard
Howing the cabbage crop.

Doors and windows!!

How could I go anywhere and not take photos of doors and windows!!! Here's some:

Then an old palace

Wandering on past the street with the facade of colonial buildings, past some typical villages shops including the "rickshaw garage", we headed offroad past an orchard and vegetable patch to what I think used to be a palace but today is more of a factory, a recycling factory where tyre inners are cut up. Not that we saw any evidence of work since it was Friday.

But a beautiful courtyard decorated by mosaics and stone columns, and many of the buildings with a touch of pink. It could be absolutely stunning if restored. Here are a few photos:

Sonargaon - the colonial past

This consisted a street bordered by crumbling houses and their facades but there were still traces to show how beautiful these buildings must have been.

There was wrought iron edging the upstairs balconies, carved stone lintels above the doorways,

columns with ornate decorations supporting the verandahs and small patches of mosaic decoration.

Only one or two seemed to have people living in them and they were in better condition.

Sonargaon

After rather a hectic week, yesterday I had a van so a group of us went for a day trip out of Dhaka to the old capital of Sonargaon. It contains buildings built between the 15th and 19th centuries, with architecture from the era of the Sultanate, Mughal and colonial period. It originated as the capital of the fifteenth-century ruler of Bengal - Isa Khan. Only 23 kilometres from central Dhaka, it took us almost 2 hours to get there but only one hour to come home.

The first place we stopped was at the museum but it closed before we had time to enter but we could wander around the grounds. The above building looked like an old palace but I am not sure if that was the case. This is some close-up detail of the building above.

There was also a couple of lakes, with the first of many patches of mauve-flowering water hyacinths that we saw. There were lots of Bangladeshi people wandering around and relaxing. There shops selling craft goods but nothing food wise.

Many of the exterior walls were decorated with mosaics such as the one below.

Entertainment for the children consisted of a "man-powered" ferris wheel shown below. There was also two "man-powered" merry go rounds for the younger ones.