On the way home from work

Yesterday was a slow trip home from work, well the first part anyway as the main road was packed with people heading home from Ijtema, a Muslim religious festival just outside Dhaka. It is said that more than 2 million devotees attend and spend 3 days in prayer but afterwards, clothed in white, they walk, ride in buses, on top of buses, pile into rickshaws, pack into the back of trucks; basically travel in any vehicle they can. The result is a huge traffic jam. Our first challenge was to get on the road. The second was to travel far enough along the road so we could turn off.

Here are some photos. The first is of the cowshed we drive past most afternoons. Occasionally they are even busy milking them by hand. I do feel sorry for them having to spend all their time on concrete but the shed is always clean and they appear well fed.
The rest are of the crowds and traffic.

Outside Dhaka

Last weekend when we went to visit the ceramics factory, we stopped at an Italian restaurant on the way back for a late lunch. The pizza I had was nice with a thin crust which I like. Plus the creme caramel is one of the best I have had for ages!!
It was right on a main road - here is a picture of the road with vehicles of all descriptions as we tend to get on roads everywhere here. Unusually though the pedestrian is walking on the side of the road rather then on the road and expecting all the vehicles to go around!!!As in Nepal and India, the big haulage trucks are decorates with quite ornate and detailed paintings on them. Although these trucks are banned from most of Dhaka during the day, only being allowed in at night when the traffic isn't quite as bad!!!

While going there and back, again I saw lot of evidence for where all Dhaka's pollution comes from - the brickworks.

They are everywhere with thick, black smoke pouring into the air (and our lungs). There is a lack of gravel here in Bangladesh so bricks are made, then broken up into small pieces for use instead of gravel or stones.

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

The top of a rickshaw and its driver

The back of another rickshaw

A stall selling for the breaking of the Ramadan fast

The local transport for pot plants

Yet another building site!