A long term intern named Miles has been organizing various weekend trips and has the ability to manipulate literally any travel situation to end up in our favor. Just getting 17 people to do anything cohesively is quite a feat, so the fact that this trip even happened was impressive.
On Friday morning we all made our way to the bus station to board a "deluxe" bus (“deluxe” only described the physical state of the bus, which means it had AC which sometimes worked, the Bengali style of driving remained the same).
We arrived in Bogra in the afternoon, loaded into a few rickshaws, and made our way to a hotel where we thought we would stay that night. Little did we know this was the beginning of an entire tour of the city looking for a hotel that could accommodate all 17 of us. About 2.5 hours later we ended up at Bogra Boarding, an incredible establishment known to the locals as a place where men and prostitutes stay on a regular basis. Before we checked in we looked at some of the rooms, the first of which had the thin mattresses folded over and falling off the bed, one of which was topped with a chair. At only $1 a night per person the price was right for even the most parsimonious members of our group. We decided this was the perfect place.
We dropped off our stuff, took all of our valuables with us, and got back in our rickshaws to go on a mission to find the temple we came to see in the first place. Apparently the rickshaw drivers had no idea where they were going, and we had to make a stop or two on the way to ask for directions. Isn’t this was makes this entire town famous to begin with? How could he not know where the temple is?
Well he didn’t know where it was because it doesn’t exist anymore, or at least the place he thought we wanted to go doesn’t. The ruins of this ancient area, however, do exist (which we later realized we walked all around, but since it is now just a big open area covered in grass we had no idea at the time). The temple we were actually trying to see was two hours away and we had to take another bus to get there. We would put that off until tomorrow.
After we got caught in a monsoon, we walked around the local village and ended up played impromptu games with the children (one snap of my hand made another boy snap, which ended up turning into about 20 children eagerly playing Simon Says with me- a game that can transcend any language barrier).
As we walked back out of the village a local man stepped out of his house to talk to Jason and me. He asked where we were from, and when we said America he said “Ahh Barack Obama!” I asked if he liked him and he said “Yes, very much!” and then Jason asked if he liked George Bush too. He said “No, George Bush created lots of quarrel in the world, but Barack Obama is a good man and he can fix it.” Jason and I were both in shock, first, this man was extremely proficient in English, second, he knows all about our politics, and third, he used the word ‘quarrel’?! He ended up giving me his address so I could send him pictures that I had taken in his village that day.
Max, Miles, Alice and I took a CNG (auto rickshaw) back to town (our group of 17 had split into four- 4 people were going home on the midnight bus back to Dhaka, then the remaining 13 of us had split up as well). This was the most comfortable rickshaw yet- we wanted to hire that man to drive us anywhere we would ever have to go again in Bangladesh. Later that night we rallied the troops and all of us walked through the streets of town looking for a place Lonely Planet had recommended, called the Cozy Café. We arrived at the Cozy Café and felt like we stepped right into a swanky lounge in New York City, complete with black leather couches, exposed brick, and blue mood lighting. Also according to LP we completely covered our table with plates of Chinese food, which ended up being absolutely sensational (at this point all Bengali food was pretty much starting to taste the same).
After dinner the 13 of us made our way back to our luxury resort of a hotel, crowded into one of the rooms, and started playing cards. It would have been a long night in Bogra if I hadn’t thrown them in my bag at the last minute… At about 3AM we started losing some people to sleep. Alice was sharing a bed with Ana in our room, and took our key to go to sleep. A few minutes later she walked back into the room where we all were, yet this time she was wearing a look of horror combined with humiliation and comedy all at the same time. She had just dropped our key down the squat toilet, never to be seen again.
I had thought our day had been absolutely hilarious and random already, but this just topped the cake. What else could happen at this point? I asked Santiago to go down to the “front desk” with Alice to ask if they had an extra key for our padlock (this in itself is a laughable request if you had seen where we were staying). The guy downstairs called a buddy from town, who came over with a hammer and a chisel and started wailing his skinny little arms at the padlock. Santi took over for a few good hits, and finally the padlock crashed to the floor. Success!
We had 13 people and 10 available beds, so I said one of the guys could sleep with me instead of having all of the guys double up. Max ended up winning the honor after an intense game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. I laid out my sleep sack, which is like a big pillow case that you sleep inside of should you ever be staying in a $1/night hotel room and don’t want to catch any diseases just from looking at the beds. But since there were two of us in bed we ended up just sleeping right on top of the sleep sack anyway.
It was about 90 degrees in our room, and in the morning when we woke up our sweat had soaked through my sleep sack and had brought up all of the dirt from our filthy bed. I also woke up to the pleasant surprise of a mysterious series of 13 bug bites in a nice uniform line going from my left elbow up to my bicep. We then noticed that next to our heads was a huge gaping hole in our mosquito net we had slept under, but that was still better than Alice and Ana’s mosquito net that upon initial inspection Alice said "I'd rather get Malaria than use that!" (it was splattered with blood and other various body fluids from past patrons of the hotel).
Santiago was supposed to wake us up at 6:15 so we could get a bus to the temple at 7, but clearly that plan was comical after the night before. We finally woke up around 9:30, but we had already missed the only bus to the temple so we decided to just get some breakfast across the street and figure out how to modify our plan. Right around that time was when we received a phone call from the French girls who were with our group. They had gone to the bus station to get tickets for the ride back, and found out that no buses were running that day because of a CNG (natural gas) strike. This didn't only mean that we wouldn't be able to see the elusive temple, but this also meant we would have one hell of a time trying to figure out how to get back to Dhaka (4-5 hour bus ride away).
We decided to try to get tickets for the train (9 hour ride). We were able to get tickets for the 1:00pm train, and in the mean time an employee at the station let us sit in a sweet room with couches and a table (I think he put us in there because we were creating too much of a scene being outside while hundreds of local people surrounded us). Once the train came all 13 of us packed into a cabin that had two bench seats and two pull down platforms (beds?) for the long haul.
Miles came up with the idea of riding on top of the train (Slumdog Millionaire style), so at one of the stops all the boys ran off the train and up onto a little footbridge that crossed overtop of the train. When the train started moving the boys jumped off the bridge and onto the train! Almost immediately after they landed the train came to a halt and the next thing we saw they were sprinting back to our car.
We were all laughing at their attempt until we came to the next stop where we were greated by heavily armed militia men wearing turbans and automatic guns on their backs. We watched out the window as they walked back and forth outside of the train, getting on and off (looking for stupid foreigners??). They took a big mysterious wrapped up bundle from off the train and brought it outside to examine, but when they opened it up there was only a stack of folded up fabric. At that point we realized they were probably just doing drug control instead of looking to create drama with unsuspecting foreigners. In the meantime though this was the only time since I've been in Bangladesh that I've been completely freaked out about our personal safety.
Finally we arrived in Dhaka around 9:30, all piled into taxis and CNG's, and attempted to make our way back to the Grand Prince Hotel (which seemed like a resort after our accommodations the night before). We got stuck in probably every traffic jam ever known to Bangladesh, but made it back an hour or so later just in time for a fabulous shower and clean bed. Perfection!
