Christmas in Sylhet

Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Our third day on the road starts and Sylhet - the big city of Northern Bangladesh - seems very far away. Indeed, we are facing a large network of rivers and watery expanses. Many people are telling us that the planned route through Instagram is impossible. Maybe we are lacking character, but we don't feel like attempting the 50 km journey to prove them wrong. Instead we head North to the small village Singpur, somehow a meaningful place since we are there only one letter away from our very final destination. In Singpur we go for a double serving of the now familiar Bangla breakfast: flat flour bread fried in a pan ("puri"), eggs and mildly spicy lentil soup ("dal").

The next barge up the river is scheduled in a few hours so we courageously decide to join Sutarpara by land along a track that follows the river. Fifteen kilometres of mountain biking bring us across isolated areas.

When we stop for a break people flock around us. There is absolutely no hostility, just a huge curiosity. This reminds me of a scene in Manhattan when colleagues and I saw Bill Clinton coming out from a bar called Le Papillon on 52nd street. As childish as it may sound, we were all thinking : "Whaow! How incredible! This is something that will never happen again! We need to get close to this guy, shake his hand, maybe speak to him and stare at him as long as possible." Well, we've experienced what it feels to be Bill Clinton or Justin Bieber for a few days. It's fun and somehow flattering to be the center of such an attention. It can also become tiring, especially when you are hungry and tired after hours of biking. In these instances, you naturally develop strategies to maximise your private space. For instance, when we stop to eat we take on the habit of sitting one next to the other with a wall behind our back and the handlebar pouch on our side so that people cannot stand immediately next to us. But let's not obscure the fact that aside from being curious, people are just being truly friendly in a very disinterested way.

From Sutarpara we take a two hour boat trip to Itna during which we fall deeply asleep. The tricky water expanse is now behind us. The afternoon brings as across a new kind of landscapes : vast grasslands could trick us in thinking we are somewhere in central Asia.

After the intensity of our first two nights, we are wondering what to expect next. Eventually, we enter Baniachung, which happens to be a much larger urban area than foreseen... and discover with great pleasure that there is a hotel in town. At 180 Taka (around 1.8 euro) the room is affordable enough. The time saved on socialising is usefully spent on taking care of the bicycles.

The following day is the 25th of December. Christmas materialises as a nice paved road. At a speed average above 22kmph, the 100 km to Sylhet are covered fast. Strangely in this dominantly Muslim country, Christmas is a public holiday. For us this means nearly no traffic on the big road to Sylhet.

The centre of Sylhet lies North of a river. On the narrow bridge, cars and trucks mix with pedestrians and bicycles in a joyful mess. Asking around, we find a freshly painted and modern looking hotel where surprisingly we are only charged 300 taka (around 3 EUR) for the room. The heart of the city seems to be a gigantic bazar. We head out in search of white gas for our burner. People direct us from one bazar to the next and - nearly losing hope - we eventually find kerosene, a second best choice. We give up on the internet. Apparently there is some wifi at the university at the edge of town but this seems like too much effort.

In the morning, we head out of town to the North and come across our first hills amid tea plantations (Sylhet is the capital of Bangladesh tea region). To reach the border, we ignore the presumably charmless main road and opt for the more adventurous route through Gowainghat. This leads us across several very dusty areas dedicated to stone crushing. In fact, stones are in short supply in Bangladesh and loads come from across the border by truck or boat to be processed into gravel (probably for cement or road construction).

After a last river crossing on a small barge, we end up in an open air quarry on the river. Indian hills are on the other side, but there is no border control post in sight. When we eventually find the official border a few kilometres away, we are told inflexibly that a ridiculous exit tax of 3 euro is due and is to be paid in a bank 10km inland. Pierre (the best and only Bangla speaker) gets to do the return trip on a small bus, while FX waits in the soft sunshine watching the animation along the border.

We are allowed across the border at last!

On the way we witness some original border signs.

We enter Dawki, the border town on the Indian side, at dusk. Oddly, we can feel that we are in another country. Maybe it's the playfulness and the confidence of the kids throwing English words. Or perhaps the greater number of women looking at us in the street and the lack of shame at doing so. We are relieved to find a guesthouse in town. A very good surprise : the Indian immigration official told us very seriously that the nearest hotel in Shillong, at least a day away by bicycle. There is no power and no water for the evening, but we are feeling hugely confortable!