BACK IN CANADA

Well I'm home, finally. That was one long time of being in transit. It started Wednesday morning at 9:20 and ended Thursday at 1:30 when I got home. My flight got into Toronto at 12:15, I also went back in time 10.5 hours. It felt so good to being flying into and knowing that I was very close to seeing my Mom again and also the result of the Canadiens vs Capitals game 7. I wanted to check the score in Brussels but the internet in the airport was done so I had to wait another 10 hours to find out. When I got to customs at Toronto I asked the agent guy before I even said hi, he smiled and eventually told me that Montreal won. It was the perfect ending to a incredible trip that I'll never forget. I'm very thankful to God for the safe trip, because when you think of I'll the stuff I did and going to 3 countries by myself and some of the situations I got into it's amazing I was completely safe and didn't get hurt at all. Going to Bangladesh wasn't planned until late in the trip but I'm so glad I went and got to experience a country that was very different from Nepal and India. It was a lot different as well because there isn't a tourist set up and a traveler can experience the real Bangladesh. This is basically the opposite of Pokhara, Nepal which is similar to Clifton Hill and isn't the real Nepal at all.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog, I really enjoyed writing it and I hoped I did a good enough job of writing to convey just out different that part of the world and the way those people live.

2nd last blog... probably.

Go Habs. What a sweet win and hopefully they can take game 7.

Well I don't have much to say, this will probably be my second last post. So today-Tuesday I didn't really do anything. I've had enough of the heat and car honking so I just chilled in the hotel today. Here car horns are as common and annoying as the bugs are when you go camping. It will be nice not to be a in a city with 10+ million people and the constant honking. Wednesday morning I fly from Dhaka to Delhi, India which is about a 2 hour flight, then I sit in the airport for what could be about 14 hours until my place leaves from Delhi to Toronto via Brussels at 2:30am Thursday. I may have to stay in the Delhi airport due to the issue with my visa and the rules of India. I'll get home at 12:30 Thursday afternoon. I'm really excited to go home and see my family, the last 3 days have gone fairly quick so that is good. I had a dream last night that I saw my family and it was exciting, actually my brother Matt made my mom late for the airport so I ended up taking a bus back to my house. It was pretty sad and once I realized it was dream I thought "that's good because I don't know how seeing my mom at the airport couldn't be good" and Matt will be at work so that didn't make any sense.

So here are some pictures from the amusement park that I wrote about the other day.

Finally Found the Girl

Well it took longer then expected but I found her. At least I'll have some company on the long flight home.

Pictures from the village.

Commit This To Memory

I'll never be able to forget Bangladesh.

So after a not so fun 6.5 hour train ride I'm back in Dhaka. The train sucked because I got about 5 hours of sleep the night before the train, I just couldn't fall asleep which isn't fun knowing the wake up call was at 6am. I managed to sleep on the train for a bit but not long enough, this was probably due to the fact that the train car I was in had a flat screen tv and they were showing some Bengali drama/comedy. I also woke up with a massive head ache so I when I got to Dhaka and went to a street pharmacy to get some pills and then took a 2 hour nap in the hotel. The hotel has free internet access which is the best part of the hotel. After this I went for supper to Pizza Hut, there is 3 or 4 in Dhaka, I'm totally sick of chicken and rice. The last night in Chittagong I had the worst chicken fried rice of the entire trip, you'd think with the amount of rice they eat they could make it taste better.

I've enjoyed my time in Bangladesh although there are some things that I didn't get to do that I would have liked too. One of them is see a tiger in the wild, a great place for this is south of Jessore a place called Sundarbans. It's a national park and has the decent population of Bengal tigers, I went to a tour guide place( the only way to actually get into the park because you have to take a boat) but they said it's not a good time because it's so hot and it would be very expensive by myself. So that was disappointing because seeing a tiger in the wild is on my bucket list. A good place for this also would have been the Jim Corbett tiger reserve in northern India but since they didn't want my money in India I couldn't go there. I probably won't let go of that grudge towards India.

When I was in Nepal I had written about how poor and underdeveloped that country was and there position on the human development index, well Bangladesh is 2 spots lower. When I say the country is very nice I'm referring to the actual country side and not the cities because honestly they are completely filthy. This is to expected some what though because Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, in my Lonely Planet book they have a stat that says the population will be 180 million people but 2015.

There are some very disheartening sites while walking down the street, most of the people that are homeless and therefore sleeping on the sidewalk are crippled. Everything from missing limbs to having a there feet turned around the other way. A common place to see this is also the train station and sadly many of them are kids. It's not uncommon to see people sitting with the legs crossed and using their hands to move their themselves, they can't uncross their legs though. This is very hard to walk past and not do anything about it or give them money, I normally don't give them money because once you give some to one person 10 more show up. I'm so thankful that I was born in Canada and have the opportunities that I have. I was thankful before I left for this trip and I knew of the struggles in 3rd world countries but my eyes have been opened even more. This was reinforced during the trip to the that guys village and listening to him talk about how hard life is for many people in Bangladesh. Life expectancy is about 66 years right now in Bangladesh. So in the one of the first blogs from Bangladesh I mentioned that they used to be under control of Pakistan. More on that: back in the day Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan(1947) This part of the world was controlled by Britain, they named India and then Pakistan, west and east. The 2 areas had about the same population but all the political stuff was done in west Pakistan( which is modern day Pakistan) West Pakistan exploited the east and treated them like crap. on March 26,1971 a war broke out which today is known as the Liberation War. Eventually Pakistan launched a strike on India and then India got pissed and fought back and kicked their ass and forced Pakistan to surrender and thus Bangladesh was born. When talking to the locals here they frequently bring this up and talk about it with great pride, they are so proud because they were liberating themselves when Pakistan was trying to impose large restrictions on these people, one of them speaking something other the Bangla( a correction to my previous correction is that Bangla is also know as Bengali) There was much bloodshed in the history of Bangladesh and the people that gave their lives for the country are celebrated throughout the country.

Foy's Lake and Sea World

Well it's Sunday morning here and that means in 4 days I'll be home, not counting today of course. So I woke up to a thunder storm which was a little bit weird because it was only the second time I've seen rain this trip. Once in Nepal and now once in Bangladesh. It's surprising how much it cools down during the rain and thunder, probably 7 or 8 degrees and the humidity is almost completely gone. Although right after the rain the humidity comes back with a vengeance and it's like it never left.

Foy's Lake Amusement Park. Imagine your at a great water park in a wave pool and they are playing your favorite song as loud as the speakers will allow and everybody is singing along. That is something I'd love to experience however I don't understand Bangladesh pop music and the wave pool water was green. So in a nutshell Foy's Lake was a big let down although watching a lot of locals dance to the music was entertaining and almost worth the price of admission. So there was only about 100 people in the whole water park, I was there at about 12pm so I just figured it's still pretty early but by 4 pm there wasn't anymore people. This was a bit strange considering when I talk to locals they tell me I need to go there because it's very nice. The lake is itself is nice, it's surrounded by semi big hills which is pretty neat because it's basically in the middle of a city with 4 million people. To get to the water park you actually take a boat down the lake and you can see the trail of gas and oil behind the boat. The rides at the amusement park were sketchy and each of them cost around 50 taka to go on. I brought an unlimited ticket which got me entry to the lake and the water park and unlimited rides. It was only 350 taka which isn't that expensive even by Bangladesh standards. Although about 20 minutes I realized the ticket guy didn't give me change when I gave him a 500 taka bill(that's the largest they have) I didn't go on any rides in Foy's Lake(it's separate from the water park which by the way is called sea world) because they looked sketchy and there was no one else on them-this is probably because the unlimited ticket didn't include rides on these rides. This sucked because I kinda wanted to go on the Ferris Wheel which is the one ride that looked okay. So the water park was funny, they had about 7 water slides and only 3 of them were working. Because of the lack of people I actually had to wake the slide operator guy up so he could turn the water on. They turn the water off when no one is up at the top of the slide. So all in all it was an okay time because the slides that did work were fairly fun but it really made me miss a Northern American amusement park(especially wet n wild in Vineland when it was around) I did manage to get a sun burn on my feet, the bottom of them because the walking paths were so hot from the sun, I also have a good sunburn on my back. I decided to show of my rocking body to the locals(who go to the waterpark in the same clothes they were on the street) Sharees and all. I didn't know if I could actually take my shirt off because sometimes that will be frowned upon in public, but I saw some other guys doing it so I figured it was okay.

After I left the water park I haggled with the ticket guy about not giving me the change and it worked. It wasn't even the same guy but he gave in eventually, his English was good enough that he understood(after I explained it 10 times) Not giving change seems to be a common theme when buying something over here, so I have to tell them what bill I'm giving them and how much change I should get. So after I wrote the last blog I went for supper-had chicken again because it's either that or fish and I don't eat fish(fish over here might be a bit iffy because of the pollution in the water) After the water park I went to KFC, it was great actually, I had the equal of the spicy chicken sand which-they call it a zinger. The chicken tasted the same as back home except there wasn't any grease which was nice. KFC is very popular here and there's about 6 of them in Bangladesh. After that I just chilled out back at the hotel.

So I've only got a couple more days before I start the journey back home, I was going to go to Cox's Bazaar which is all beach resort on the bay of Bengal. Although I felted that I didn't want to go just for 2 days because it's a 4 or 5 hours bus ride south from Chittagong. This would me a 12 hour bus ride back to Dhaka and that's not something I wanted to experience. So the plan now is to catch a train Monday morning to Dhaka and just wait until Wednesday morning when I fly to India. There's one more site to see in Dhaka that I didn't go to before so I do that on Tuesday and that'll probably be the last thing I do before the journey home. I'm counting the days until I get home, I've been doing that for about a week now.

Well thanks for reading and enjoy your Sunday, not sure when the next blog will be, probably on Tuesday. Hopefully I'll be able to put up pictures then.

Go Habs
Andrew

Chittagong.

I didn't proof read this so ther's probably lots of mistakes. There's also no pictures because this computer doesn't seem to have a USB slot. Go Habs.

Well another couple days and another interesting travel story. So I left Rajshahi on Thursday afternoon at 4pm. I bought the train ticket earlier in the day, my plan was to go from Rajshahi to Chittagong. Although first I had to stop in Dhaka to change trains. So the guy at the train station said there's a train to Chittagong at 11:30pm, my train was suppose to arrive at 9:30. This would have worked out great but as you can probably guess it didn't work out. The train ride was fine, I had an AC car with the upper middle class people of Bangladesh so they don't stare as much as other people. The crappy part was how long this train took, it didn't get to the station until 11pm and since Dhaka is so big there are several stations. It didn't stop at the one I wanted it to stop at though(the main station was probably another 20 minutes down the line) So I get off the train and it's pitch dark because the power is off and this is a small station so they don't have a generator. I find the ticket guy although there's about 7 of them in the office and there looking at some paper with just a single candle trying to sort something out. So I didn't get anywhere with them and just decided to go find a hotel since I wasn't making the train to Chittagong because it wasn't leaving from this station. Finding a hotel isn't that hard as there are plenty of them, except the language barrier was a real problem this time. The baby taxi guy assumed I wanted to go the Sheraton hotel which I said yes too because it's in the LP guide, however on the way there I found the listing in the book and it's like $130 a night. that's insane. So now I have to explain to him that's it's too expensive-this was challenging to say the least. I was in the rich area of Dhaka where all the embassy's are, thus the hotels are more expensive. My driver was crazy, we almost hit at least 10 people and every time there was space of a couple feet between us and the car ahead he would accelerate like he was drag racing someone off the line. I quickly learned not to sit leaning forward with this guy. So eventually we came to another batch of hotels and I walked into one called Asia Pacific-as soon as I saw the front lobby I knew it was too expensive. I ended up walking down the street a bit and found the garden inn hotel. By this time it's like 11:30 at night and I'm super tired and getting more pissed each minute. I couldn't deal with trying to find another hotel so I stayed at this one which was like 50 bucks for the night. Side note: for those of you who haven't traveled before this about 5 times above my budget. The price may not seem like a huge deal to you but I'm used to paying about 10 bucks or less. So from a budget point of view this sucked but the hotel was really nice and there was a sit down toilet.

So after watching some wrestling on tv(it's really popular over here) I fell asleep knowing that I have to make a 300km trip to Chittagong on friday. I was up about 10am and ended up catching a bus for 300taka to Chittagong, the bus left at 11:30am and got here at 5pm. Not exactly a quick ride or safe for that matter, at some point I was more comfortable on the back of that guys motorcycle with no helmet then in the bus. Most of the buses here are private so now many rules apply, this driver was weaving in a out at like 70 km/h in a huge coach bus. The highway was only 2 lanes all the way and we had a couple almost head on crashes. Super intense.

So it's Friday night at I'm in Chittagong which is the capital of the Chittagong Division(go figure) the population is 4 million people making it the second largest city in Bangladesh. Rajshahi had about 1 million people. From what I've seen of the city it's very much a port town as there are tons of boats and factories along the river. It seems like there a steel making place every couple hundred metres. The other type of factory they have are ship breaking yards, similar to the dry docks in Port Weller(welland canal reference) Except here they don't get put back together and most work is done by manual labour, using blowtorches, sledgehammers and brute force. They are often used in Bangladesh movies as bad guy hangouts.

I probably won't be able to get pictures because they are getting strict with letting people in because of pollution and work conditions. If you google bangladesh ship breaking yards and search for pics you'll get a good idea of what they look like. The gov. also just sued a couple ship yards for causing to much pollution.

Well that's all I got for now, I'm hopefully going to eat something for supper that isn't chicken. Tomorrow I'm going to Foy's Lake Amusement Park, I pretty excited.


Andrew

Y'all act like you never seen a white person before.

You know those super hot and humid days during the Ontario summer when you walk out the front down and it's like stepping into an oven, well that's what Bangladesh is like right now. Currently I'm in Rajshahi which is on the west side of Bangladesh and is the hottest place in the country during the summer time(coldest in winter but now snow) It's probably close to 45 degrees here and it's getting annoying. I took a train from Jessore to here that took 5 hours and wasn't too bad, although I asked for tea and they brought me coffee. I don't drink coffee and don't plan to but I had my first 4 cups on the train, I had 4 because they kept bringing it and they get offended when you turn something down. The coffee was actually pretty good but I don't plan to keep drinking it.

So the last night in Jessore I was having dinner and met a couple my Sweden/USA that work as missionaries in Bangladesh. Super nice people and when they found out I was going to Rajshahi they gave me there friends mobile number so I could meet up with him. So when I got to Rajshahi I gave him a call and ended up going over to his house for supper. It was nice to have a home cooked meal, we had something similar to Kraft dinner, it was a nice change from the rice and chicken that I eat almost everyday. In Rajshahi I stayed at Haq's Inn, nice hotel and the staff are friendly although they also get really annoying because if they do anything little thing for you they ask for a tip and just stand there until you give them something. This gets super annoying from people, because I don't tip over here that much because I'm on a budget and most places have a 9-13% tax on some of the food bills.

So on Wednesday I was just about to check my e-mail and then the load shedding for the power happened which sucked so I was going to go to the river. The River here is the Padma River and it's actually the Ganges but it's not called that in Bangladesh. So I found a rickshaw guy who I thought understood me when I said river but he clearly didn't because he dropped me off at some building with a huge stone wall and a fence. I still have no idea what the place was, so I just gave him some taka and walked away annoyed and covered in sweat because it's about 1pm when this is happening and it's the hottest point in the day. I was just walking down the road(headed to the river) and a guy stopped by on his motorcycle and had the typical conversation with him that I have with everyone over here. So after 5 minutes he left, then 5 minutes later he came back and suggested I get a guide so I can see Rajshahi. His english was very good, he had a masters in English from Rajshahi University, university is very popular here(probably because it's a way out from the hard life of a typical Bangladesh person if they can get a good job) So I talked with this guy for a bit and he offered to show me around so I got on the back of this motorcycle and headed off. This was really fun because it was actually the first time I've ever been on a bike and it was something I wanted to do before I left for home. He took me too a couple parks along the river and he was very keen on showing me his parents village(he lives in the city now). I was very interested to see a real village so I agreed to go with him. What an eye opener that village was, although I expected it to be dirty and lots of shacks. I was wrong. The houses are made of mud and some of them have steel roofs but not many because not everyone can afford them. This guys parents are teachers at the school in the village and by Bangladesh standards they must get paid fairly well because the house was nice. The whole village had electricity and most people seemed to have tv's and ceiling fans. The houses seemed very strong and the mud was almost like bricks, the guy that took me there said they are stronger then bricks. Most of the people in the village just live off the land, there are many mango trees and fields of rice. All the land is farmed for rice currently-they call it pati(sp?) So they sell all there products around Bangladesh, they also export alot of mangos. Clothing is the number 1 export, alot of the t-shirts you were probably come from Bangladesh. Sadly though these clothes are made but child labours who work in not so great conditions. Now, I'm against child labour but at the same time at least these children aren't living on the streets begging for money and doing drugs. Street life is a terrible thing 3rd world countries-in Thamel, Nepal for example there's a group of kids who are addicted to sniffing clue in bags. They just stand outside the super market where all the tourists go and ask for money for food but what they really do is but clue to sniff. Some of the saddest looking children you'll ever see, most of them were about 8yrs to 15 yrs old and the older kids there brains are fried.

So after we checked out his village his mom made us dinner which of course was curry chicken, it was actually pretty good and not the spicy. I think I'm developing a taste for curry, although I'm sure this will change when I get back home and go on my diet of pizza, beef and pork. I can't put up any pictures because of the computer I'm on but hopefully tomorrow I'll be able too. I felt like a rock star walking through the village because everyone following me and very curious to meet me.

So today the plan is too get some food and then go to the train station. I have a train to Dhaka that should take 5 hours and then I have to catch another train to Chittagong which is on the far east of Bangladesh. So all together I'll be on a train for about 15 hours. I've got 6 days left of travelling and then I need to be back in Dhaka, I plan to check out the Chittagong division and visit a couple islands that are in the area.

So 7 days until I come home and get to wear clothes that don't smell like sweat no matter how many times I do my laundry in the sink.

The Squat Toilet

This is the standard toilet in Asia, commonly known as the squat toilet. Luckily I haven't had to use one very often because a lot of the hotels have normal ones. There's always a bucket and tap beside the toilet to clean yourself up after your done, there's no toilet paper either.

This is only the picture that would upload so that's all I got for now. There's a blog underneath this as well.

I found the spice now I just need the girl.

So this blog should have been up yesterday but the power went off and I wasn't about to sit around and wait for it to come back on, so to my loyal followers: I hope you enjoy this one.

The spice is located in chicken kabobs that don't look all the spicy.. That is until your tongue touches them, it's not a spice from sauce either it's something they put on like you would salt. By far the spiciest thing I've ever ate. The heat is really starting to bother me, it's not possible to walk 5 minutes without being covered in sweat. I've been drinking a large amount of water to help with the dehydration, the other morning for breakfast I drank a full litre of water in about 10 minutes.

Slight correction on the language here, it's Bangla not Bengali. Also, the main religion here is Muslim, over 80% of the people are Muslim. This is a big difference from Nepal and India where the main religion were Hindu and Buddists. So I'm in Jessore now, it was about a 1.5 hour bus ride from Khulna. There doesn't seem to be much to explore in this town, no historical sites anyway. I'm gonna stay here for 2 nights and then take a train further north. The 2 nights in Khulna were really cheap, a little more then 2 dollars a night. The hotel was nice enough and there wasn't any bugs on the beds sheets so that was good. Here in Jessore I'm staying at a pretty fancy hotel, I decided that I wanted AC and a tv.

As I said before I'm a pretty interesting site in Khulna, I wear sunglasses just so I don't have to make eye contact with everyone I say hello to. In Jessore I'm not as popular, which is fine with me because it was starting to get annoying. I'm sure it'll start up again soon. So here's a typical conversation with a local(it happens just as fast as you read it)
Local: Hello
Me:Hello
LM: what is native country?
me: Canada
LM: Why come Bangladesh?
Me: Tourism
LM: How long you stay?
Me: 2 weeks
LM: what is your professional qualification or are you student?
Me: I work
LM: What is job?
Me: Security Guard at shopping complex
LM: How much salary you make?
Me: 30,000(to round up)
LM: Oh very good, are you married?
Me: No, no kids either
LM: why no marry? The look of disappointed on his face when I tell him I'm not married is unreal. They can barely believe it.
Me: I usually just say I don't know why I'm not married. the real reason is they are man made prisons, your doing time!
LM: In Bangladesh the main food is rice and fish, what is national food of Canada?
Me: I hesitate for a bit and then answer with beef and pork(I guess, I don't really know)
LM: okay, thank you.
Me: your welcome.

So I've probably had this conversation 50 times, the other night I went to a new years celebration and I had it about 5 times in row because different people kept coming by. Another common thing is for me to walk down the street and people just shout " hello, what is country?" It's pretty funny sometimes. At that New Years party for the year 1417, my picture was taken a lot and I was given a little flower pot which I will probably re gift later to my mom(don't tell her).

Food here can be pretty cheap, since there isn't a tourist market here there aren't many western style restaurants or food available so for breakfast I just wander around until I find some place that looks clean. Most of the "waiters" don't speak English well enough for me to tell them what I want so I just say naan bread and egg and I'll eat whatever they bring out. Breakfast is pretty safe most of the time. I went to a great place in Khulna called Grillhouse, this was my first encounter with a spicy kabob. The food at this place was fantastic and it was very clean, mostly just middle class Bangladesh people because it's a bit more expensive then other places.

So there's a little bit of a problem with flights into and out of Europe, I really hope that cloud of ash is gone by next week because I would like to fly home. At first I thought I'd be fine since I was leaving from India and then I realized I stop in Brussels. Well hopefully everything will work out because next Thursday I'm coming home.

Loving Bangaldesh

There's a blog under this one that was posted shortly before I wrote this blog. SO if you want to read them in order scroll down until you see the next one.

I'm overjoyed right now, because after the boat and bus ride I was walking to a cyber cafe and I was thinking "wow, I really hope the Canadiens won last night and overtime would be even better" It turned out they did and I really had no idea about it before I saw it on the internet.

I'm pretty certain this is my favorite country, next to Canada of course. It's so beautiful.

So my boat ride didn't turn out be 25 hours, it was only 15 hours. I ended taking to a different spot then I was planning, this is mainly because the guy at the ticket office thought it'd be a better idea. Which actually work out fine because I saved along time on the boat to end up in the same place. Currently I'm in the Khulna District of Bangladesh, the capital is Khulna and that where I am. Bangladesh has 7 divisions by the count I have and I was told by a man on the bus that they have 64 districts and the transportation system is not so good. I'm assuming he's never been to Nepal and taken a bus up and down those mountains. Bangladesh is completely flat except for the area that borders Burma, although the largest peak is like 1200 meters. In the lonely planet magazine I have it states that if the water in the Bay of Bengal were to rise by 1m the result would be a loss of land about 12 to 18% of the total land in Bangladesh. So after the boat ride I took a cycle rickshaw to the bus station and got a bus to Khulna for 60 taka, which is about 90 cents. The ride was about 2 hours long and actually not too bad. Although I was the most interesting thing on the bus, I also saw a goat on the roof of a bus that was passing in the other direction. That isn't uncommon and next time I hope to have my camera ready for it.

So here's what I'm missing about back home
1) hockey
2) chocolate milk and milk in general.
3) my family and my dog Sassy.
4) a super thick milkshake from Mcdonalds.
5) jackson square... NOT!

Seriously though I've been wanting a glass of chocolate milk for a while now but they don't have any brown cows over here. One drink that I'm started to become addicted to is mango juice and freshly squeezed orange juice. I've got 13 days to go and then I'll be back in Canada.

A thought about the Maoist in Nepal. They are a political group who is against the government because they don't feel they treat the people well, which they don't. I know this because of the people I talked to in Nepal none of them seemed to like the government. One reason is the lack of hydro, the water levels are very low this time of year and they had a dry winter season. Although because Nepal has so many rivers the government sells the electricity to India- this is what ticks them off. So they fight for the people, they aren't afraid to use deadly force though when facing off with the police and army of Nepal.

He's a Rocketman

The picture is of a bus that seemed to be stuck on the side of the cliff. I think it had been there for a while. The drop was probably 1500feet.

This blog was written yesterday but not posted until now because of the load shedding in Dhaka. Well it's now been 2 nights in Dhaka and that's enough for now. I heading out on a boat called the Rocket. River travel is very popular here with 6.5% of the total area of Bangladesh being waterways. Find the place to book a ticket was an adventure in itself because not many people speak english, especially the people operating the bicycle rickshaws. In India the best way and most dangerous way to get around was taking a tuk tuk, they didn't have them in Nepal but they have them here except they are called baby taxis. They are also powered by Natural Gas since the government has banned petrol vehicle is certain areas. They have also banned plastic bags(I'd love to see Canada do this) unless it's for something that would be hard to carry.

The New Years Festival was massive, they close all the main streets and it's just a big party. I wonder if New Years in Canada would get that big if it weren't -10 outside. I've had some interesting food today, for breakfast I just walked into a place called Cafe Jheel and the man said something to me in Bengali-I heard naan beard so I just said yes. The food came in like 5 minutes which was a change from Nepal, it turned out to be naan beard, curried potatoes and some vegetables. Well I ate the whole bowl of curried potatoes and it actually wasn't too bad. I would choose to eat it again though. In Nepal that food took anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to get to your table, depending on what type of restaurant and how expensive it was. Adam and I always went to a place called My Favorite Restaurant, the service was okay the first couple times. We probably went there 7 or 8 times and each time the food was different even though you ordered the same thing. Eventually we started to wait on ourselves and take the liberty of writing down the order. The best time was the last time when I got a cheeseburger and what came out was a burger but the cheese was on the inside. I still have no idea what the burger was made from but it was really good. Also during this time Adam got a cheese tomato pizza that was just cheese, there wasn't any crust. The tomatoes were also cherry tomatoes that weren't sliced but just placed on top and they were still green.

Hello from Dhaka

New Country
New Timezone
New Currency
New Adventure
New Culture.

Well everyone I'm in Dhaka now. After the short flight from Kathmandu I'm in the capital of Bangladesh. It was a pretty sudden decision to come here. How it came about is: when I got back from the terrible 3 days in Bandipur I needed to think of somewhere else to go because I'd seen enough of Nepal. So monday morning I went to the Indian embassy in KTM and started to figure out what I needed to get back in to India. The problem is that once you leave India you need to be gone for 2 months before you can come back, even if you have a multiple entry visa. So I was handed a bunch of paper work and told to fill it out, they also wanted copies of every travel document I had. Passport, Visa etc. They also wanted a detailed itinery day by day of what I'm doing in India. So I didn't want the hassle of all of that and decided if India doesn't want my money some other country can have it. Now the decision was between Bangladesh and Singapore, those were the 2 countries that came to mind. The only restrictions were the flights had to be cheap and they don't use the euro. And since I'm not hip enough to visit europe and a flight to Singapore was expensive I decided to go to Bangladesh. So I book a flight for Tuesday and then a return flight from Dhaka to Delhi on April 28th. The day before my flight back to Canada. There should be less of a problem in the airport since I'm leaving about 12 hours after I get there.

Bangladesh

Wow it's hot, really really hot. It's also New Years here so the celebration is pretty intense and the main streets are closed due to the party. Bangladesh has a population of 150 million, the country is 147,570 square km and bordered by India and Myanmar(to the south) So as of today I have 14 days left in Bangladesh and I'm predicting they are going to be super fun. I really like the country so far and it's a lot different then Nepal and India. Not many tourists come here so my picture has been taken a lot just when I walk around. The people are really nice and are very keen to know about me and my job back home, they also are surprised when I tell them I have no kids. Today I went to the Bangladesh National Museum which was very interesting and a great way to learn about the history of this country. Until 1971 Bangladesh was controlled by Pakistan, in this year there was a genocide of the Bangladesh people by the Pakistan army.

Well I'm sweating just sitting here so that's all I will write for now.

Onward and Upward

Well I'm flying to Bangladesh today. I'll explain the reason for this and how it came about in the next. For now though I've got some stuff to take of in Nepal.

If anyone else is in the area I'll be in Dhaka.

Andrew

Homesick in Bandipur

The last 3 days have sucked.

So after I left Pokhara, I went to a town called Bandipur. It's a little less than halfway between Pokhara and Kathmandu. The town itself is on the ridge of a mountain and very lovely, although I hated it and didn't want to be there. All the crap started when I got dropped off in Dumre which is about 7km from Bandipur and the closest town, the plan was to catch a jeep from Dumre. That didn't work out because there were protesters blocking the road and there was a strike so there weren't any jeeps. The people blocking the road and organizing everything are a group called The Maoists. The town of Bandipur had been without hydro and water for the last 10 days and they had finally had enough. I'll explain this group more later, I have to get all the facts straight before I write them here. Anyway, since there were no jeeps I had to walk to Bandipur, it was about 35 degrees out and very humid. Instead of taking the road I was told by a local I could take the trail which was quicker and more direct. Well it was more direct because it went directly up the side of a mountain, this climbing was super intense because there was no real trail to follow, luckily 2 kids showed me the way up the mountain. This walk took about 3 hours and I still wasn't at the top completely, I was also out of water(which seems to be pretty common) I found this child playing outside and got some water from him, water is pani in Nepali. It might have been the most satisfying drink ever, it's a good thing the kid was around. After this I continue on my way up the hill and eventually made it too the center of the village and found a guest house for 250 rupees per night. Although sleeping on the ground would have been more comfortable then this bed, which was really just a table with a blanket on it. After find some food I went to lay down because I was ready for bed, although it was only 7:30. So I fell asleep quick and woke up covered in mosquito bites and sweating like crazy even though I didn't have any blankets on. This pattern would continue every 4 hours until the morning and make it one of the worst nights I've ever had. The next morning I went out to get breakfast only to discover that most places were closed because they were striking due to the lack of water and such(the water has to be pumped up from the river which is like 2,000+ below) I decided to explore the town and also look for a buddy-Angus from Ireland who I met in Pokhara and was suppose to be in Bandipur. I walked for about 20 minutes and was completely soaked with sweat, I realized this sucks and wanted to come home right then. So that's when the homesickness kicked in and it would last for another day. I didn't do anything the rest of the time there other the read and play solitaire because I didn't have the motivation to due anything. I tried to leave that day and head back to Kathmandu but I couldn't get down the mountain without walking-because of the strike. After another awful night of the same stuff as the night before I got up Sunday morning and started the long journey back to Kathmandu. It started at 9:30am with a jeep ride to Dumre-they weren't striking anymore and then a bus to Kathmandu. The bus ride took about 7.5 hours and that included sitting in traffic for 3.5 hours in 35 degree heat. The bus was packed right full and the lady sitting beside me was using my shoulder as a pillow. She was also grabbing my leg when the bus would stop suddenly. On a 2 hours bus ride you could play over/under with the number of near death experiences, I would set it at 15 for a 2 hour trip. This trip was crazy and I can't believe the bus made it safe. Well I gotta go because the internet place is closing.

Andrew

Pictures from the trek

So here are the pictures from various parts on the trek. Today I'm headed to a town called Bandipur which is in between Pokhara and Kathmandu, not many tourists go there so I'm looking forward to it. Being in Pokhara is almost like walking down Clifton Hill but instead of wax museums there are trekking shops and paragliding places every 20 feet. It doesn't feel like being in the real Nepal.


The most dangerous vehicle ever, it's belt driven and basically is like the front of a walk behind roto tiller. There are 3 small belts with no covers on them. The driver sits in front of the pop bottles. These are everywhere because it's cheaper then a tractor.


A Rhododendron tree, it's the national flower of Nepal. Very Beautiful.

Trekking.

For some reason this blog is being really strange and not letting me upload pictures right now. On to the blog though.


"Mountains have the power to call into their realms and there, left forever are our great friends whose great souls were longing for heights. Do not forget the mountaineers who have not returned from their summits." Anatoli Boukreev, 1997

Well I've been to the mountains, not nearly as close as I would have liked but close enough. I'm got back from trekking yesterday completely tired and my feet are very sore. So on Sunday April 4th, we started the trek. By we I mean Adam and I who I met in the dorm and is from the US. So we went to get the trekking permits which were 2000 rupees and then we had to get another permit which is normally free but they change that on April 1st when they made it 1400 rupees. So in total it was like 30 bucks just to get the permit, some of the money goes to the conversation of the trails but for the most part it's a money grab from tourists. I had arranged a taxi from the hotel to the permit office to the bus station for 300 rupees. After we got the permits though are driver informed us that he was leaving us there because someone else needed a taxi to go to Naya Pul which is where we were going but we are going to take the bus. So I told the driver that I wasn't paying him anything and he seemed okay with that, I guess because he was going to get like 1200 rupees to take these other people. Eventually we made it too the bus and started the 2 hour trip to Naya Pul. We started walking at 2pm and kept walking until 4:30, we stayed in a village called Tikedhunga-1500m for 100 rupees. All the lodges are cheap, the food is not though. Most food is about 3 times as much in the lodges because they have to bring everything up there that they can't grow.

So we just chilled out there for night and the next morning we were headed to Ghorepani-2750metres. This meant that we have to climb all day. We left at 9am and started to climb, at one point we climbed about 3,000 steps. Lunch was in a town called Nangethanti-had spaghetti at Hungry Eye Restaurant. After lunch we started climbing again to Ghorepani, my legs are on fire at this point but by 2:30 we were in Ghorepani. All the climbing was well worth it once I saw Annapurna South7219m...

Day 3 started at 4:30am to watch the sunrise over the Annapurna Mountain Range at place called Poon Hill, which is at 3210m and 1.5 km up from Ghorepani. Nothing about this climb was fun, and it got colder as I went higher. The sunrise was great but there was about 200 people around so that took away from the experience and also the fact I had to go #2 very badly(probably from the pizza I ate the night before) So I felt like crap and started to head down. I ended up crapping just off the side of the trail which isn't fun because the leaves on the trees here aren't like back home. I would have killed for some maple leafs. That's probably enough details about that. Well anyway I made it back down and then chilled out for a while, at 9:00 am we started the 7 hour walk to Grandruk-1940m. Being much lower in elevation this meant we had to descend for most of the day, which was fine with me. The crappy part was that before the descent we climbed pretty high up and had another great view of the mountains. That sucked because the view was better then the view from Poon Hill and I could have saved that energy. We left at 9am and got to Grandruk at 4pm, completely exhausted and ready for bed. I had some great pizza for supper and then quoted Seinfeld lines with Adam for an hour or so. I didn't bring a book to read because I wanted to go with as little weight as possible. During all the trekking we met a lot of people because the trails are extremely popular because everyone wants to see mountains.

Day 4 was Grandruk to Naya Pul, which took about 4 hours and was fairly uneventful but tiring because all the steps we had to go down, I was still at 1940m and Naya Pul is 1070m. All the steps were made by someone along time ago, they are all flagstone. The trails themselves are interesting, although because of all the trekkers it's common to see garbage which is awful because it's such a nice area. A Snickers bar wrapper takes away from the scenery. On the way down there were a lot of locals working on the side of the trail, there were older women-at least over 50 crushing rocks with a hammer to make gravel so they could fill bags and then sell them. They just sit down with a hammer and crush rocks all day. Another interesting site was seeing 4 women carrying a huge steel pipe up the mountain. The pipe was about 10-15feet long and supported by 2 pieces of bamboo, in a formation like an I. The top and bottom parts of the I would be bamboo and at the 4 corners there was a women. In the real Nepal there isn't a thing as retirement, they keep working until they can't anymore.

Parahawked.

Well, I've been paragliding. More specifaclly parahawking! It was great. Not as scary as I thought it would have been although I wasn't feeling the best for the last the last 10 minutes of the flight and for a while after I was on the ground. So this is the short how too of parahawking. Your flight person is behind you during the flight, mine was a girl named Elle who was from Canada/Finland(so attractive) anyway she sets up the chute. I think that's what they call it. We are on the top of a hill that's like 2000ft, Elle pulls on the some controls as I take a few steps forward. She has instructed me to run a bit, so I do. I started running and it's really hard because of the resistance from the wind on the chute. About 15 feet in front of us the hill goes down a bit, so we aren't fully in the air yet so I keep running on a different part of the hill because there's a gradual decline. I take a couple steps and the next thing I know is that I'm floating. It was a wicked sensation and not actually that scary. In the paraglide contraception there's a board that you sit on so it's like sitting on a chair, it's quite comfortable considering your 2000ft up. I should have mentioned Bob, he's the Egyptian Vulture that would be landing on me in the pictures above. He's a nice vulture and he likes buffalo meat almost as much as I like hamburgers. Bob went back and forth between me and the other guy who was also parahawking. They had whistles that they could blow and Bob would come to the whistle. The other tandem pilot was Scott Mason-he invented parahawking, it was really cool to meet and talk to him. So the flight was about 30 minutes and not very cheap but it was worth it because I probably won't do that again. I'm not sure it was the best thing ever mainly because I was expecting a bit more risk and danger but it was still great and if your ever in Nepal you should do it. I was suppose to get a video but it didn't work so if you want to see a video just search on youtube for parahawking. It should come up. Now for a story that's a lot different.

So I decided I should try and explore the city of Pokhara a bit and I decided to rent a bike to go around the lake. I paid 150 rupees to rent the bike for the day, so I started to make my way out of town. After about 30 minutes of biking I noticed that my pedal/crank is starting to fall off. About 2 minutes later it falls completely off. I don't have any tools to fix this so I walk a little bit and come to a village where some kid fixes my bike in about 2 minutes. I tip him 50 rupees and continue on my way. I should mention that it's about 35 degrees outside and the sun is intense. I keep biking and now I'm getting away from the last of the little villages and I've also ran out of water. After biking about another hour or so my peddle falls off again, this time I'm really screwed. I continue on my way, pushing my bike because I can't ride it now and there is some houses up ahead. Well there was no one around that could fix a bike, actually no one around at all. I think they were all fishing in the lake. Fewa Lake is the name of the lake, it's pretty big but not huge. I continue to follow the road because I think I'm about half way around at this point, except now the road takes a sudden incline up and to the opposite direction. Crap! After walking up hill a bit and dying of thirst I decided to turn around and head back. Well not all the way back because I intended to hitch a ride, although the only people around were fishing so I paid them to take me across the lake. At this point I was utterly desperate and I probably couldn't have made it back by walking without water. So 2 local kids and my bike and I set off across the lake, we are about 20 minutes into the trip and I'm still crazy thirsty so I take out my empty bottle and drink the water directly from the lake. A day before this I was telling someone that I wouldn't swim in the water because it didn't look good. But when your as thirsty as I am it didn't really matter. I probably drank about 500ml of water, I felt much better and it didn't taste that bad. So after about 2 hours(at least) we were back on the other side of the lake and now I just had to get to shore. So I do that except I walk through mud for about 5 minutes, this mud is up to my knees and there's probably a lot of animal shit mixed in with it. If I didn't have a disease before that I might now. I make the walk threw town in bare feet and return the bike, I give the bike rental guy the cliff notes of the trip and he doesn't really seem to care so I just walk away. I'm still covered in mud and I'm sunburned now as well because my sunscreen came off because of the sweat. I take a shower and then explain my story to my room rate who can't believe I'm still feeling good despite drinking the water from the lake. It's been 2 days now and I didn't feel any effects of it. So it was a typical day in Nepal. This will be the last blog for at least 4 days since I'm going trekking in the Annapurna Mountain Range with Adam-a guy from the US that I met at the dorm I'm staying in. I'm really excited to see some beautiful views of the mountains and I should have some great pictures when I get back.

ps. Fish, I don't eat fish anyway so I haven't experienced any street fish but alot of the restaurants here sell them so they must be okay, although we have different standards of okay compared to here.

Thanks for reading.
Andrew