morning comes in paradise...

I am back in Dhaka today, fighting the polluted, hot, crowded streets (or so it seems after spending 4 days on a boat in the Sundarbans) with a tan and relaxed from a weekend of lounging and eating and exploring. The crowds here are crazy though because Eid is on the horizon. They thought Eid might be today, but as it is a holiday totally dependent upon the appearance of the moon, the whole city is just waiting for it to be announced sometime within the next three days. However, that is far from my mind with the taste of the weekend trip still fresh in my mouth. It was beautiful and warm and worth every last taka to be there. I can’t believe the diversity of this country. After a 6-hour bus ride from Dhaka to Khulna I have seen a lot of this country in passing, and it has given me a hunger to see more, to see slowly and to see deeply into the lives spread out before me. From rice to jute to fishing…this country is as diverse as it is crowded.
The boat trip was incredible. We jumped on a country boat (sort of like a fishing canoe) at the harbour in Khulna and got on the boat that would be our home for the weekend. The first night sleeping on the boat was awesome. Silent and still on the edge of the Sundarban forest, the lights of Khulna in the distance reflected off both clouds and water. It was awesome. I got up early – between 4-4:30 am (which I continued to do throughout the trip) – to wait for and watch the sunrise. That was my favorite time of the day. Sitting alone on the deck in my rolled up jeans and hoodie, sipping hot milk and listening to the sounds of the forest fishing villages. The second day we went for a hike in the forest, which turned out to be more muddy than we anticipated. The entire forest floor was mud and Mangrove roots that was constantly moving with thousands of tiny crabs. We saw some spotted deer, a wild boar or two and some unbelievably fake looking tiger prints. (I still am skeptical because they look so very cartoonish) When we reached the place where forest touched ocean, we found a beach covered with shards of broken clay pots and discovered that it was an abandoned salt flat. – For those of you well versed in Gandhi’s life, I could just picture what it must have been like years ago in a place not so different, maybe even not so far away from where I stood on a salt covered beach.
We all crowded on the little country boat the next morning at 6:00 to take a ride through one of the little rivers that snaked its way through the forest and at that time in the morning it was beautiful! The sun shining through the branches, the quietness of the forest…I loved it. Then we returned to the boat with just enough time to eat breakfast and get our swimsuits on before we trekked through the ‘grasslands’ to get to the sea beach. It was absolutely stunning to see for this prairie girl. (This being the third time I had seen the ocean and all – and even more strange, I have now seen it on three different continents!) It was not the cold, dark, rocky ocean I remember in Vancouver and it wasn’t the tropical crystal clear water of Tela, Honduras either, but it was warm and beautiful and with waves big enough to knock me over if they caught me off guard. We were the only people on the beach for as far as we could see and it was fantastic to swim in that heat and humidity.
That being said, I realize this entry is getting longer and longer with tedious details so I will end for now by saying that tiger or no tiger, this trip was exactly the sort of thing I came out here for!