Donny and I woke up early to catch our bus to Bogra, in the northwest. We got to the bus station and got our snacks for the ride.

Then we got on the bus, which turned out to only be a shuttle bus to take us to the real bus. A pretty smart system, since getting the big bus into the city center would have been a pain.
Riding through the countryside was actually very refreshing. Rice paddies and farms as far as the eye could see, very green everywhere. I’m glad we were sitting towards the back, because the bus was barreling down a two-lane highway, swerving around rickshaws, CNGs, and dump trucks, just narrowly missing inbound buses doing the same thing in the other direction. Not a place to put your hands out the window.
As we were driving, we saw some weather on the horizon:

And sure enough, we were eventually in the middle of the second monsoon since I’ve been here:

And no, the reduced visibility didn’t really slow the bus down at all…

We finally got out of the rain and arrived in Bogra. The rain had cooled the air significantly, and the city itself seemed silent in comparison to Dhaka. We took a rickshaw to the only hotel we knew, the Safeway. Unfortunately, all the rooms were taken, but the employees went out of their way to call every hotel in the city until they found one with a vacancy, booked a room for us, and even had their own driver take us to the new hotel. So while we don’t know anything about the Safeway as a hotel, they obviously have a passion for service.

We checked into our hotel, then headed to our first historical site. We stopped at a restaurant, judging by the number of rickshaws parked outside, a favorite of the local rickshaw-wallahs. The mutton we were served might have been the spiciest thing I’ve ever eaten, and our mouths were just on fire for the rest of the afternoon. We also made the mistake of sitting next to the TV, which meant that the rest of the diners had to decide whether us burning our mouths on the mutton or the tv show was more interesting.

We then took a bus to Mahastangarh, where Donny asked a rickshaw walla if he could take us to “the historical things”. We arrived and toured the Mahastan museum and its collection of hindu and buddhist artifacts.
Goats roamed free, apparently a trend at important sites in the country:


We walked across the street to the ruins of a temple, then toured the rest of the citadel ruins. This citadel marked the oldest city in Bangladesh, parts of it dating back to the third century, B.C. We walked atop the boundary wall, when it all of a sudden ended in a village. We walked through the village, then into a market where we got whistled at … by a guy with an actual whistle. We bought a few mangoes of different types, then headed back to Bogra for a late dinner.

We got up the next morning, took a local bus to Joypurhat, then another bus to Paharpur. Once off the bus, we got a rickshaw to take us along a dirt road to Bangladesh’s biggest historical site, biggest tourist attraction, and one of its three World Heritage Sites.


The site features the ruins of a Buddhist monastery and temple, in fact, the largest Buddhist temple south of the Himalayas. The site itself is enormous, but perhaps the most impressing thing is how empty it was. We got there in the middle of the day, and as the afternoon went on, more visitors started trickling in. Our guide told us that during the busy season, in winter, the site may get 1000 Bangladeshis per month, and about 30 foreigners, mostly in large groups. In the off season, starting in April and running through the monsoons, the number drops to 300-400 Bangladeshis and 1-5 foreigners. So we may have been their only foreign guests for the month of June! Considering how difficult it is to get to the site, it’s not surprising.

Yet another goat munching away:

They let us climb up the stairs to the niche where a large Buddha statue would have been:

Our guide insisted that there was still a Buddha statue inside the hollow chamber. However, since the chamber is sealed off, no one has seen it. Sounds like the next Indiana Jones adventure…

Paharpur is where Donny and I saw our first tourist trap in Bangladesh! Compare that to the curio shops all over southern Africa or Egypt!

As we approached the gates, our rickshaw was forcibly stopped by the first restaurant owner “Come visit my restaurant! I have cold coca-cola.” We eventually were allowed to pass, as we rolled by three or four shops selling similar tourist kitsch (though none of it was really distasteful), then our rickshaw was stopped again, this time by the other restaurant owner on the strip, telling us to come visit his restaurant!
While walking around the site, we were approached by a “guide”. He did know a lot about the site, and was able to answer our questions. We also got accosted by a guy holding a bag claiming he had “ice cold seven up”. We were in the middle of seeing the site, so we refused. Then as soon as we sat down to eat some of the biscuits we had brought along, he showed up again!
As we were leaving, we figured that since there wasn’t exactly a surfeit of tourists, we’d see if we could get the restaurateurs to compete for our business. Donny asked the first guy how much his chicken cost. “Thirty Taka.” Then he asked the other guy “Forty Taka.” “But this guy over here has it for 30!” “… Forty Taka.” So, we went with the first guy. I wasn’t hungry, but sure enough, they brought out a plate of rice and a bowl of chicken.

Except… it wasn’t chicken. So Donny put the guy’s feet to the fire: “Is this chicken?” “Yeah.” “You sure it’s not beef? Because it looks like beef. And it tastes like beef.” “No no, it’s definitely chicken.”
Oh well, I guess that’s what you get at tourist traps.

Then we grabbed a tempo back to Joypurhat. This, however, had to be the most rickety one in the country. The entire ride, we were sucking back exhaust fumes… so much for our cardiovascular performance after that trip.

We tried to find a bus that was going back to Dhaka, but the earliest ones were still a 5 hour wait away. So we eventually boarded a local bus back to Bogra. We asked for a bus going to Dhaka, and were pointed to a desk. We gave the guys our money, and they wrote out a ticket for us, telling us the bus was leaving at 8:30, only 5 minutes away. Well, the first bus that passed by, they started shouting out to it, asking if it had 2 free seats. It didn’t, so they continued doing this with every bus that came through. Donny asked them if they had lied, whether they were just going to get us on any bus they could. “No no, we have a bus. We have seats on it.” They eventually hailed a bus that they said was the one, we got on, they gave the conductor some money, but then Donny found out that this bus only went “near Dhaka” which wasn’t going to help us that much. So we waited, they tried to hail a few more buses. We eventually got on a bus, and got back to Dhaka in the middle of the night. We grabbed a CNG home, showered all the soot off us, and went to bed.