Tales From The River Bank

November 25, 2010

Mohonganj by boat

My portrait photo session is off to a quick start today. I walk out of the hotel and see a big pair of eyes belonging to a young girl and my camera comes out and her snap is taken before you can say Bette Davis.

A voice then comes across in a strong Cockney accent from behind her belonging to a guy of around 30 who lives in London who's visiting his mother here in Sunamgonj.

We have a chat and he says breakfast in the café belonging to the little girl's father is good, so in I go and have rotis and dal and the Londoner suggests I get the boat to my rough destination on Mohangonj.

I half-heatedly look for the ghat where he said people board at 10:00 and never do, and instead ride west along by the river on a concrete path that fades out in a field. The young boys that have followed me lead me through the wheat to the road which my compass tells me is heading south, but what's the alternative? None.

My wheels are on tarmac that's nice and smooth and there are few cars sharing it and I ride for an hour going not west, but south and then decide to take a right down a small concrete trail that goes past houses made of natural materials. Outside them are children and parents who look aghast as I ride along.

Then the concrete ends - no way further - and a man who speaks English says I must take another turning a little north, just 100 metres away, and after doubling back that's what I do.

It leads to a mud trail that's smooth and the countryside either side is flat and beautiful with golden wheat as far as the eye can see, as you might expect. It's a narrow path and cows and villagers walk on the route and I photograph them with their cattle as they silently watch on.

The path takes me to a river where a canoe-like craft is coming across and when it gets to me, my bike and panniers get put aboard and a boy of around 10 years old gently paddles us across to where a brick-paved route that's very bumpy starts.

I follow it even though a handful of locals say I can't get far on a bicycle. Maybe they're right. I simply want to find out.

There are more cows and villagers and I take some more photos and after a short while, maybe 30 minutes, there's another river, but this time twice as wide. It greets me and the people lingering around the huts on the bank take me to the nearby ghat that's just a steep, mud bank where there're a few small wooden boats similar to the one I took earlier, but then a larger powered one chugs down from the east and I ask people if it'll continue west and they say it will, so I put my stuff on it when it moors and sit with the other passengers on top, one of whom speaks basic English and the young man says it'll be 8:00 PM before the vessel gets to within 5 km of where I want to go. Then I'll have to cycle the rest. No problem.

What are the alternatives, I wonder - the paths I tried seem incomplete and I resign myself for a long boat ride and that's what it is, with me sitting below the metal roof, which I sat on for a couple of hours and found too hot.

Surrounding me are people on the wood deck worn smooth by bare feet and flip-flops, with the roof just a metre above it. It's mainly women down here and their little children - who are all no doubt wondering what this old white guy in shorts and snazzy footwear is doing with a notebook on his lap, here on the chugging boat with them all heading west.

It seems weird that I can get online and email my wife from this remote, chugging boat with its noisy little engine, but that's what I do to tell her that she'll probably be in bed by the time I get to a hotel tonight.

It's a slow journey. At some point we go to the river bank and a cow gets on board. It's seems unfazed.

The temperature gets more comfortable later in the day.

Dusk comes, then the orange sun sets before the boy who speaks English gets off at his village.

I've been looking at a lot of river bank and the people who live along it doing their washing or bathing themselves. The waterways have got wider and we travel down them and between islets of mud where there are basic homes and I wonder what these people do here.

It's dark quickly and by six the stars are out and everything is monochrome, then just black... there's no moon tonight. Not yet, anyway.

As the boy departs he says it's three kilometres to my stop and I calculate it'll be an hour tops, even though our speed is pedestrian due to the depth of the water being not much more than a couple of feet, judging by the two-inch-diameter pole the young guy perched at the pointed front sticks in to the bed to push and guide the boat.

We get stuck on the bed for five minutes and I wonder how on earth the people here can navigate in pitch blackness, but I suppose living here all their lives they know each inch of land what little of it there is to see.

The last hour of the journey they use hand-held flashlights and that's the only lighting there is in view. Where are we? There's no sign of life now but the stars are bright and eventually in the distance a glow of lights appears, just some dots like pinpricks really, but clearly homes with some basic lighting.

We get there at 7:00, which is earlier than the boy said, but the five-k ride to town is more like 15 as it takes an hour, during which rickshaws loom out of nowhere with a few having those oil lamps that offer scant illumination. Nevertheless, they look wonderfully Victorian and I can't grasp why they don't have dynamos fitted so they can see better.

The town is lit dimly and the streets narrow, like a traditional market area, and I get to the one hotel and pay 300 taka for a room just as the power goes, so a candle like you get on birthday cakes is what lights the room - placed on the battered little bedside cabinet.

My silk liner will be used tonight as everything looks dodgy.

I really need a shower and the guy has brought me some hot (tepid) water in a one-litre plastic bottle, which gets diluted with the cold in the primitive bathroom. It's ultra basic.

Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 966 km (600 miles)

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