A quiet day today, had a short walk into town, to a family museum. This was a small collection of items belonging to an individual who had loved music. His descendants had decided to keep them in his honour. I guess that a museum will be an oddity in a country like this where every item has a value and is broken down and reused. Why would anyone keep memorabilia?
From there we walked to the Shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal, a saint from the 16th century. A highly revered religious figure, of huge importance to the Bangladeshi people. We couldn't find the shrine itself, only a sizeable graveyard and a marble tank that contained some holy catfish. According to legend these are metamorphosed black magicians. Both of us would have liked to have seen these fish, but the water was a murky green, didn't smell too good and no matter how hard we peered, nothing, not a whisker or even a bubble at the surface.
We walked back to the hotel and as we negotiated a road crossing Mike asked me if I'd mentioned the 'incident' yesterday and no I didn't.
As we drove out to the village yesterday, we encountered the usual mayhem on the street. There are no rules when it comes to using a road, and this includes when to overtake and what side of the road to drive on. Each to their own, whether cycle rickshaw, motorised rickshaw, car, bus, motorcyclist or pedestrian. You simply head for the next space in the direction that you're travelling.
As we drove out to the village yesterday morning a car pulled out from the side of the road and just touched a cycle rickhaw's front wheel. The wheel rose right up into the air and the rickshaw flipped onto it's side, but it seemed to happen in slow motion. Mike jumped out of our CNG and went to help pick up the rickshaw as it was only a few feet from us. Luckily it appeared that no one was seriously injured (the rickshaw driver was rubbing his foot), the passengers seemed unharmed and so we continued on our way.
We have spent the afternoon at the hotel researching our onward explorations. Tomorrow we're catching the train to Srimangal, where the tea plantations are. The hotel is booked and so is the train, so let's hope it all goes to plan. Our first two choices were fully booked and one of the staff here has reassured us that where we are going is a good one, he's from Srimangal so we're trusting his judgement.
We have said our farewells to the owner of the guest house, she wrote her contact details on the reverse of a business card, along with her name - HELENA, in capitals. Oops, I did apologise straight away as I've been calling her Helen all along. Below is a photo of the two way street in front of our hotel.
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