the uncultured project

Wow! I knew rural Bangladesh was beautiful. But the natural scenery and beauty of the Chittagong Hill-Tracts was a whole other level of beautiful. The people (like these kids above who asked if they could take a photo with me) were friendly and welcoming too! And, best of all, because I was in a mostly Buddhist village - I could finally wear shorts! I can’t really do that in most parts of Bangladesh without getting scolded (or getting stern looks) from the local Muslim population.

More photos and details after the jump.

The Chittagong Hill-Tracts are a remote and rural part of Bangladesh. True - you could probably say this about any part of Bangladesh outside of Dhaka. But there were two things which make the Chittagong Hill-Tracts unique. Firstly, foreigners needs special permission to enter. Secondly, you can’t get cellphone reception here. Oh the torture. I’m surprised I was smiling in any of these photos. Although, I did spend a lot of time in this pose:

Alas, I never got a signal. Which is just as well because the scenery here was very beautiful. Here is the view outside the hotel I stayed at.

Now anyone who knows what I’ve been up to during this project knows that I haven’t spent a much (if any) time going on pleasure trips. The reason I was able to make a trip like this is because I tagged along with a couple of teachers (including Rick Davis who I had mentioned before) from the American International School in Dhaka. They helped cut the cost of this trip considerably since I didn’t have to pay for a lot of things like transportation.

One of the reasons they were making this trip was so that they could attend a wedding. Here is Rick talking with the groom:

Yes, the groom showed up to his own wedding in jeans and a baseball cap. I love it. I wish all weddings were this laid back. This was also the first Buddhist wedding I have ever attended. It was too hot indoors for me to witness the ceremony unfortunately. But I was able to get a copy of some of the photos taken inside. Here you can see the bride and groom together:

The ceremony involved wrapping and tying a rope around the couple. I guess it’s a literal take on the phrase “tying the knot”. Or maybe that’s where the phrase originated from? After the wedding was over, it was sightseeing time! Rick - who is also Buddhist - wanted to check out the Buddhist temple nearby…

This temple is also one of the few locations where you can kind of get cellphone reception. I had suggested the temple adopt the slogan “Come for the cellphone reception, stay for the enlightenment”. No word yet if they agreed to use that slogan

Oddly enough, I got yelled at by a young Buddhist monk. Even though we were outdoors, you weren’t supposed to wear shoes near the temple. “Can’t you read the sign!?” yelled the young monk to me in Bengali. Actually… no… no I can’t read Bengali. After he realized that I was just a confused foreigner instead of a random disrespectful guy - he warmed up considerably. He even came to see some of the photos I was taking. I decided to take a couple of him as well:

Earlier in this trip, Rick was telling me that every trip he’s gone on in Bangladesh, the car he’s rode in has always broken down. And so shortly after visiting the Buddhist temple, our van’s battery died. So we were stuck in front of the temple entrance…

Above is a photo of one of the teachers, the driver, and the van as we sat stranded. Along with us were a few kids we met at the wedding. They wanted to come along with us for our sightseeing. They were really friendly. Here’s a photo of them from the wedding:

I love it when technology brings people closer together.

Luckily, not far from the Buddhist temple was a tea garden which was open to the public. We decided to take a look. As we did, Rick pondered aloud, “he just needs to go find a spare battery - that should be about twenty minutes…. ?”. I shook my head. “You’re not thinking in ‘Bengali time’” I replied. “An hour or two?” he suggested instead. Unfortunately even that was too optimistic. So we decided to sit down and relax.

When some passerbys saw us taking this photo - one of them asked me in Bengali “are they your parents?”. Oh boy.

We had some time to kill and I had heard of this natural occurring tunnel/cave at the bottom of the hill. The girls that had accompanied us were dying to see it. I obliged and accompanied them. It was a pretty great experience. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of that - it would have been impossible to take photos there. It was actually an uphill cave - and muddy, wet, and slimy. It was also very dark. We were given these Indiana Jones-style torches which not only helped but also looked very cool to hold. I also was one of the few that managed to keep his torch lit the whole time

I was pretty exhausted afterwards - as you can probably tell at this half-assed attempt at smiling for the camera after coming back from the cave.

We spent a total of two days and two nights in the Chittagong Hill-Tracts. And, while I came here for some R&R with some friends - I was able to do some project related work as well. What exactly did I do? Unfortunately, that will have to wait until such time I can edit and upload the video on YouTube. It might take some time because there are a whole bunch of other videos I’m hoping to edit and upload to YouTube first.

I apologize for the suspense. Stay tuned.