One of the more interesting dining experiences I had during my recent two-week tour of Bangladesh (we wanted to cover 3 UNESCO World Heritage sites in the country) was taking one of those antiquated colonial-era, British-built paddle-wheel steamers upriver from the Sundarbans (the world’s largest mangrove swamps) back to Dhaka, Bangladesh’s chaotic mega-capital.
There are only 4 of these century-old paddle-wheel steamers left in the whole of Bangladesh, trawling its network of waterways, and our 16-hour journey gave us a view into the life on the banks of riverine Bangladesh:
We took First Class, which had 8 cabins with twin bunks each. Leaky air-conditioner unit notwithstanding, it was worlds apart from the cramped conditions below.
Whilst passengers in Second and Third Class packed their own meals for the journey, First Class passengers can enjoy a hot Bengali meal churned out from the little kitchen on-board.
Our dinner consisted of chicken Dopiaza (spiced, oniony chicken & potatoes - very tasty), curried eggs and “sobji baazi” (braised green papaya, with carrots & string beans), all served with “kichuri” (spiced rice cooked with yellow lentils).
The roads seemed so much more dangerous - single-lane, bi-directional traffic with derelict heavy trucks hurtling along both ways. I thought I’d died a hundred times - the way our driver-from-Hell was driving - but I guess the Man Above was not ready to see me yet.
When we were travelling in SE Asia, H insisted that we had to bring ours life jackets (I didn’t not want)…he didn’t trust the jackets provided nor my non existent swimming skill. (I prefer taking the risk than not able to bring anything, took too much space!
We missed the mango season by a month - everywhere we went, mango trees were in full bloom - just flowers which have yet to develop into fruits, but not one single mango to be seen anywhere eventhough we visited quite a few markets.
The rainy seasons are expected to hit a month or two after that.
Just sharing some scenes from the markets we visited:
The Bangladeshis like to braise root vegetables (carrots, daikon) and fruits (like green papaya, gourd),sometimes two or three types together, and lightly spice the dish. We have kind of braised vegetable dish at almost every meal, called “sobji baazi”.
