Bagerhat

Bagerhat was our next stop the following day. This town forms the centre of the largest area of archaeological monuments in Bangladesh, outside of Dhaka. The monuments, which mainly comprise unusual but beautiful multiple- and single-domed, red-brick mosques and the tombs of past Bangladeshi heroic figures, are scattered in a relatively small area which is easily visited on foot. We started at the museum and the largest structure, a 60-domed mosque, which was beautiful; the other mosques and tombs were relatively untouristed and we could wander around them at our leisure. It was nice to just walk around the area generally, because the monuments were located in and around the town, so we were walking along little, windy paved lanes between people's houses, rice padis, ponds and soccer fields, passing schoolgirls on their way home, old women out walking, kids playing cricket and rickshaw drivers.

Along the way we encountered various people, all of whom were interested in talking to us, including an eccentric old man who invited us into his home, introduced us to his family, and we went through the usual photos and detail-swapping routine. It was an amusing encounter, but we found it difficult to get out of there!

We then made our way to Khulna by bus. There we randomly met a guy by the name of Rigan, who was very enthusiastic about being our new best friend in Khulna. No problem for us! He took us around Khulna and showed us his University (which he greatly relished, because he could walk around in the company of two white women in front of all of his classmates), where we also met another student, Azam, who both joined us for lunch. Rigan then invited us to his home (which involved a canoe across the river and a long pan ride) to meet his family. It was a nice way to see the city, and good to also get out of it for a while and into the suburbs where he lived. His family were lovely and insisted we stay for lunch, and in the end we spent the whole afternoon there.

Afterwards we made our way back to the city and went to his student accommodation, which was in a small school providing additional tuition for local students in many subjects: maths, science, English etc. It was there that we met his friend Amin, another tutor, and introduced ourselves to their class of students, so that they could practice their English. It was good fun. Afterwards we made our way to the local cinema, where Azam also joined us. We really wanted to catch a Dhallywood flick. After seeing the posters around everywhere we were intrigued to know how they compared to Bollywood.

It was quite an interesting experience! The cinema was dingy and poorly maintained, and the movie was called "Why Arif became a robber". It was hilarious! The quality of the movie was horrible, the sound extremely loud, and the action ongoing - not to mention totally unrealistic! Punches were swung, guns fired, people went flying! What I found interesting was that all the women in the movie were not the beautiful, curvaceous, dark-haired beauties of the Bollywood world - they were all very chunky, almost overweight, but still wearing the tight-fitting, revealing clothes I expected. And they couldn't act, nor dance. Neither could the male actors. Plus the power kept cutting out, much to the dismay of the crowd, which just added to the experience. All in all it was perfect - just how this sort of movie should be! Ange and I couldn't help laughing all through the movie, and our three friends just couldn't understand why we found it so hilarious.

The next day we had planned to go back to Kolkata, and at this news our new friends were quite sad, but in the end we decided to stay to give us time to cruise around the markets and have an undisturbed day just walking around. We hadn't told Rigan and Amin this, but later on that night we decided to call them up and invite them to dinner. They were absolutely overjoyed that we hadn't yet left Khulna and were on our doorstep as soon as we could say Khazam! So we had one last evening with them, which was fun, we hung out in the park for a while, cruised around the streets and then to dinner, before leaving us at our hotel.

We still had a few days left of our trip, and we liked the idea of exploring the famous city of Kolkata before heading home instead of spending all our time in Bangas. Plus we felt like we'd done our dash in Bangas. So, accordingly, the next morning we cruised down to the train station to head back to Kolkata.