Then came a first series of heartfelt and reciprocal thank you and good byes, and we left for one of the nearby villages to visit some of the women who work for the NGO.

I would have loved to be able to amble along these bucolic paths a while longer, and maybe cycle around. It was so quiet, so peaceful and beautiful. As we walked, Sheenagh Day, the director of Maison Bengal, a fair trade company who buys products from Tarango to sell them across the UK, told us the stories of some of the women in that community, and how their life had been transformed after they started working for the NGO. She mentioned one lady who’d brought us some delicious fried cookies, the day before. Pashful is a very tall woman with strong features, and Sheenagh had never seen her smile. Until one day, she came to her, looking radiant, and said : “With the money I’ve made, I was able to buy land. My family will never go hungry again.” Not only that, but she put her children through school, and now, her older daughter is studying Political Science at the Dhaka University. You can find her story in more detail if you follow this link to one of the Tarango web pages. It is quite inspiring.

We stopped at the compound of an old lady who’d created new models out of jute, out of her own volition and inspiration. She didn’t smile, either. Kept a stern face until the very end, when we were taking pictures and we asked if she would smile, and she did, gradually. Smile or not, she listened intently to all that was said, whether in English or in Bangla.

Her sheep (above, on the left) was quite successful, but she’d also made this great boat made of jute that we decided to give to Dawn, who’d worked so hard to make this adventure a reality – as a souvenir. If you look closely, you’ll see little ladies inside the boat.

This lady, on the other hand, who seems to be a leader in the community, and one of the boat race winners, the day before, was all smiles. She’d hurt her hand a bit (I think it got caught between two boats), but it didn’t matter, she said. I’m really, really happy.

Well, we really would have liked to stay longer, but we had a two-hour ride to Barisal if we wanted to catch our plane – and not just any plane, either – and so, we said our good byes, exchanged a lot of hugs, took a few more pictures, and climbed back into our little van.

Back soon for the last leg of our journey. I did mention that it was an intense 48 hours, didn’t I?

Yes, I missed the pot, but it would seem that I landed as close as anyone else was able to, because I won the first prize. Yeah! And I’m glad to report that women fared much, much better at this game than men did.

The game was followed by a cultural show, back under the larger tent erected along the river, with very pretty dances…

Next, our group, otherwise known as “Game For Anything if Slightly Deranged Bideshi Women,” climbed onto the stage to perform a song that none of us (save two) had ever heard before. We’d started rehearsing it on the deck of the Rocket Boat, the night before…

Our friend, whose idea it was to sing this particular song, knew the lyrics by heart and we copied them on scraps of paper, and shared them. That was easy enough. The real challenge was getting the tune right, as we had no music, no wi-fi on the boat to access You Tube or iTunes, and our leader, a beloved member of our community blessed with superior organizational skills – as the king pin of the whole trip, she pulled no stops to make things happen, even when it seemed impossible – a great sense of humor, and a knack for coming up with original, if somewhat wacky ideas, will not hold it against me if I whisper, in tiny font, that the Singing Fairy went on strike the day she was expected to work her magic at her cradle. No matter. Sing we would, and sing we did. A cappella. And what we may have lacked in musicality, we more than made up with enthusiasm and conviction.

Luckily, there’s no known record of our performance : we were all too busy bellowing our feminist message on the stage to think about filming it for posterity.  Then again, I only have to consider the very large public…,

… and the number of cell phones around, to get this vision of generations of villagers glued to a tiny screen, laughing uproariously. Or it could become a punishment of choice : if you don’t do your chores, you’ll have to watch these crazy ladies singing ten times…

OK, and what song am I talking about, you wonder? Here it is.

Great message, right ? Sadly, it is still relevant, some forty years after it was first created – and not only in Bangladesh – just watch the US Republican Presidential Primary. But I digress…

Back in our little village, the lowering sun was casting an orange glow on the water…

… and we were exhausted – the overnight journey on the boat, if reasonably comfortable, had not allowed for much rest.

We went to our little guest house, and indulged in a water bucket shower (and a stiff gin and tonic) before we returned to the Tarango compound. The party was not over, and after a lovely dinner, there was more music and dance, and we all showed our moves for a little while. Until fatigue took over. It had been a LOOOONG day, and one we will not forget any time soon.

We left Dhaka aboard one of the Rocket Boats, a paddle-wheel river steamer built in the 1920′s, and I’ll dedicate another post to that first leg of our journey. For now, I would like to rush to the Barishal regional office of TARANGO, the acronym for Training, Assistance and Rural Advancement Non-Goverment Organization, where a traditional welcome with marigold garlands, and the traditional Tilaka or Tikka (the area is predominantly Hindu) awaited us.

In the past 30 years, TARANGO has helped tens of thousands of women through their programmes (Handicrafts, Women Entrepreneurship Development, Village Savings and Loan Association, and Women Institutional Development.) They’re best known for their beautiful jute bags, and their baskets sold across the UK and other European markets, including fancy stores like The White Company, London.

Recently,  TARANGO started organizing a women’s boat race on International Women’s Day, but this year, the race involved a group of unexpected, if rather conspicuous participants: eleven Bideshi (foreigners in Bengali) women crazy enough to embark on a traditional flat bottom boat without any preparation whatsoever. All we had was a pair of arms each, and plenty of enthusiasm.

I had somehow accepted the responsibility of steering the boat, being blessed with reasonable good balance, but after only a few minutes during which I narrowly escaped falling headfirst into the water, and almost clobbered my friend sitting at the tail of the boat, a man wearing a dhoti tucked high up on his legs jumped aboard, grabbed the steering paddle from my hands, and proceeded to steer the boat while yelling orders in Bengali that none of us could hear – the racket was astonishing – forget about understanding them. In his considerable enthusiasm, our rescuer also cheered us up, shouting, and swinging his arms wildly back and forth. Incidentally, he also hit my head and shoulders (and those of my friend paddling on the other side of the boat) whenever they happened to be in his way – pretty much all of the time. And when he felt we were not paddling fast enough, he’d drop the steer, leap forward to the middle of the boat, which immediately diverged according to the current (which was pretty strong and contrary, I forgot to mention), yell and swing his arms some more, before he remembered his mission and bounced back to his steering position.  I have no idea how long the race lasted, but thanks to this impromptu collaboration, we eventually did glide under the red string marking the finishing line.

Of course, we lost the race. But it’d been a long time since I’d laughed so much. And, if the joy and appreciation demonstrated by the very large public is any indication (the banks of the river were packed with throngs of people on each side, as shown in pictures below), the story of our clumsy participation will keep the area’s villagers entertained for many years to come. Invitation was already extended for us to come back again next year, and indeed, why not ? It would be nice if we could train, though, so we don’t look so utterly ridiculous, next time. Maybe I’ll bring a helmet, too.

None of us took their cameras on board the boat. We weren’t even sure we’d be able to operate it without capsizing it. Besides, we’d seen a few of the local participants frantically scooping water out of theirs, so we also had to worry about it sinking. But I still hope some pictures or short video will turn out, somehow.

In the meantime, here are photos of the area, the crowds cheering on each side of the river, and last but not least, the official participants to the 2011 TARANGO Boat Race.

This lady kindly demonstrated the paddling moves for us.

Before the races, we sat under a colorful tent as they kicked off the day's celebrations with a few speeches and, much more to my taste, a couple of songs.

As we only participated in the last race, with the winning team, we first got to follow the action onboard a "speed boat" - well, it had a motor. This was the bottom! See what I mean when I mention the possibility of sinking?

On your marks! Get set! Go!

As I said, there were a few people around...

The winners, their red and white saris still soaking wet. It was a joy to witness their pride and unabashed happiness. The team was awarded medals that we each passed around their necks, and... a television to be shared by the community.

By then, it was only the middle of the day, and we still had a few mundane things to do, like break a clay pot blind-folded, sing a cappella in front of hundreds (more?) people, and dance, but this is for another post…

Greig is himself a descendent of General William Palmer Sr, whose family portrait I had already encountered in William Dalrymple’s extraordinary biography set in Hyderabad, “White Mughals.”

The Palmer Family

Apart from the fact that Dalrymple’s book recounts a tragic love story set against a fascinating backdrop of political and historical intrigue, it also explains how the rather strict divide between Europeans and the native population that we’re used to seeing depicted in movies and books about the British Raj was not something that happened immediately and as a matter of course. On the contrary, it would seem that the men (and some women, too, he gives a few examples of ladies who married Indian noble men) who first made their way to India around the 1600s, whether they hailed from Portugal, France or England, easily and naturally slipped into habits that had been totally foreign to them prior to their arrival. Not only did they develop a real taste for local customs, they often embraced them, wearing light, cotton pyjamas, smoking the hookah, eating spicy foods, even engaging in Hindu or Muslim rituals (when they did not convert), and last but not least, entering relationships with local women, marrying them and having children who were later sent to school in Europe. This rather satisfying state of affairs started changing in the late 1780s, with the arrival of the new Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, who’d just been defeated by George Washington at Yorktown. “He was determined to make sure that a settled colonial class never emerged in India to undermine British rule as it had done, to his own humiliation, in America,” says Dalrymple. This new kind of “order” was mostly enforced in Calcutta, while the Residencies attached to the different Indian courts like Delhi, Lucknow or Hyderabad, were somewhat spared a little while longer, but the road was paved, and the appointment of Lord Wellesley as new Governor-General of Bengal and head of the Supreme Government of India, in 1897, built upon this foundation. “His imperial policies would effectively bring into being the main superstructure of the Raj as it survived up to 1947 ; he also brought with him the arrogant and disdainful British racial attitudes that buttressed and sustained it.”

The painting above shows Palmer with his family, in Lucknow, in 1785, and what a lovely, loving scene it is. William Palmer Sr was married to a Moghul princess, Fais Baksh, and they had six children together, one of them, the young child standing on the left, who went on to become a famous banker in Hyderabad.

Charles Craig’s own mother hailed from an old Zamindar family in Purnea, Bihar, and his vast knowledge and curiosity have led him to discover two paintings that he believes (and others with him) to be from Zoffany, and set in Dhaka. They will soon be part of an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, where they should hang side by side.

One is a cremation scene on the bank of a river, with the moon parting the clouds, and the light of the fire reflected on one of the walls of a tomb. I was not fast enough to take a picture of the slide of that painting, unfortunately, nor do I know its name, but it would seem to be the Wari Christian Cemetery in Narinda, Dhaka. I went on Google Earth and searched for the river, all around the cemetery, which used to be huge (the equivalent of three football fields, I read somewhere) and is still quite large, but there is none. Then again, many rivers and waterways in Dhaka were filled up over the years.

I did find pictures of a tomb that could be the one on that painting.

Wari Christian Cemetery, Narinda, Dhaka

And here is a an old 1875 picture of the cemetery from the British Library’s website. It doesn’t look as overgrown as it is today, and we can see, on the left,  a structure that looks like a tomb, but I’m not sure it’s the same one.

The second painting that Charles Greig has attributed to Zoffany shows the South gate of the Lalbagh Fort, in Dhaka (or rather Dacca, as it used to be spelled, and actually, as it continues to be spelled in French).

See it ? Two good old-fashioned stands, the kind that you might find pretty much anywhere, a bamboo pole (now, this, you will not find everywhere), and to hold it? Two pens. The cap on this pen kept falling, each time the teacher lifted the bar further up, and each time, she carefully put it back.

Fusion High Jump Equipment. With local mattresses piled up on the ground, and there you go. A far cry from the two wealthy schools with state-of-the arts facilities that our children attended in previous years, but it met the purpose, the kids had a great time, and we witnessed some pretty impressive jumps. And isn’t that what matters?

A beel is a pond (or wetland) with static water (as opposed to moving water in rivers and canals – typically called khaals), in the Ganges-Brahmaputra flood plains of the Eastern Indian states of West Bengal and Assam and in the country of Bangladesh. Baika Beel is part of a larger water body called a Haor (a depression shaped like a bowl, flooded every year during monsoon) and part of a successful environmental project to save Bangladesh’ wetlands. Baika Beel has been a sanctuary since 2003, and  native swamp forest trees were planted to restore diversity. Fishing, hunting and the collection of aquatic plants is forbidden by the community, and as a result, fish (on which the local community depends for survival) are more abundant and large flocks of birds have started coming back, including species which had totally disappeared for many years, and others globally theatened.

During the monsoon, almost half the length of these trees (below) is immersed by water.

We saw only one lotus flower, and it was a pink so radiant that it seemed artificial and I wondered if it was a piece of plastic. See it ? We could not come close enough for me to take a good picture ; the water was not deep, and the zoom of my camera not powerful enough for a good close-up…

Getting the boats ready for our little troupe to embark.

The children were the first to jump onboard.

Below is the area where the birds sleep, at night.

After Baikka Beel, we had very little time left before hitting the road again for the long journey back to Dhaka. Our guide wanted to show us some tea gardens, a rubber plantation, and a red hill. I’m not sure if it’s called red hill after the reddish canopy of the trees covering it or because of the red clay that borders the river snaking at the bottom. The sun was out, and we were able to shed jackets and fleece. As soon as they saw the river, the children jumped in, ignoring the adults’ numerous warnings not to get wet – most of them were out of clean clothes. But of course, within minutes, they threw caution to the wind and got soaked, one after the other, pretty much from the neck down. Unfortunately, the battery of my camera died just then, so I don’t have pictures of them frolicking in the river. Just trust me when I tell you they had a grand time.

Apparently, people indigenous to the states of Bihar, Orissa and Assam were brought to this area by the British to work in the tea gardens, and pineapple, rubber, and lemon plantations. These ethnic minorities seem to live in isolated communities ; most practice Hinduism, some are Christians, and their prospects are very limited. We saw a young woman at a weaving loom (picture below) : the cloth they produce is for Aarong, a fair trade organization established by the BRAC NGO and a well-known and beautifully supplied shop in Dhaka, and most cities around Bangladesh.

Our children had an absolute ball playing with the village goats. I'm not sure the goats enjoyed their visit quite as much.

After the village, we headed for Madhabpur Lake, the short journey offering a few more photo opportunities.

Tea shop, one of many. Just as in India, rare is a corner without a small shack selling tea - usually served in a glass.

Nothing had prepared me for the sight of the lake and its surroundings. Carpets of purple lotus flowers hem the borders of a lake with multiple arms, so wide we could not see the whole expanse of it. A very short hike takes you to the top of the low hills planted with tea bushes, and from there, the view is simply breathtaking. We were there just before dusk, and watched the sun go down, its reddening disk reflected in the water below. As we waited for some of our companions still taking pictures, I joined our guide, a very tall young student from the area, who was sitting by the lake. He told me that a few weeks earlier, he had taken his girlfriend to this very spot, declared his love, and asked her to marry him. Which is why he sat there.

The following day, as we were walking through tea gardens, I asked him about his fiancée. She’s a student like him and they met at university. Of course, I had to ask him about arranged marriage in Hindu communities. He told me this was no longer compulsory.

Next post, we’ll go back to Srimongal for a bit of boating in the Baikka Beel (Wetlands), and for the children (to their immense delight and their parents’ dismay) a fully clothed dip in the river running at the foot of the Red Hill, after going through a tea garden and a rubber plantation.

Srimongal (it can also be written Sreemongal) is the tea capital of Bangladesh, with dozens of tea gardens, a national park, wetlands attracting rare species of migrating birds, and a gorgeous lake with carpets of purple lotus flowers. It is quiet, the air is clean, and the pace, leisurely.

So, let’s begin with the bad stuff, so we can quickly forget about it. We drove six and half hours to get there, and another seven hours to come back. This would be bad enough, but I also need to mention the way people drive in this country, particularly bus drivers. Either they think they’re blessed with several lives, and loosing this one in a road accident is no big deal, or they all drive under influence (even though Bangladesh is officially a dry country) and have no clue as to the risks they take (and force upon the poor souls trapped inside these deathly cans on wheels.) I shut my  eyes an awful lot, and we all let out some loud expletives as huge buses overtook us madly, in a cacophony of horns, or as we narrowly missed another one driving straight at us.

It is possible to reach Srimongal by train, but the tickets were sold out. Plus, trains don’t necessarily leave on time,and the trip can take anywhere from five to seven hours, anyway. One last option is to fly to Sylhet, and then drive a couple of hours to Srimongal. Not necessarily shorter, and more complicated, logistically. More expensive, too.

All this for just a day and half of fun and beauty. But it was totally worth it.

The first morning, we hiked a jungle trail.

We saw the widest bamboos I’d ever set eyes upon.

We just missed Eric Carle’s famous caterpillar.

Here is the gang of junior explorers!

And their parents.

A signpost, lest you loose your way in the jungle.

We saw some poisonous (and very pretty) spiders, but no snake, thank goodness. Apparently, they come out during the rainy season. Not sure where they go the rest of the time, and I don’t want to know.

And the tiniest papaya in the world, said our guide. See the small brown grape-looking fruit ?

One of the soothing highlights of this short trip, for me, was how peaceful it is, over there : the town of Srimongal is busy, for sure, but the countryside is all nature, a few people walking or cycling along the roads, some cars, and that’s about it. Coming from crowded, noisy, overly congested Dhaka, it felt like luxury. Which doesn’t mean we didn’t see anybody. Once out of the jungle trail, in fact, there were quite a few families enjoying their week-end at the Lawachara National Park, many women among them wearing shimmering saris.

I loved how these scattered, skinny trees seem to tower over the carpet of tea bushes. In the mist (it was quite cold) the scenery had an eery quality.

More to come about Srimongal. It will help me tap into the reserves of positive energy I brought back with me – along with some tea.

I was crazy (or wise) enough to belong to the second category, and so, boarded an old Russian plane from Kampuchea Airlines and landed (after being thoroughly shaken, stirred and smothered in thick white fumes) in Pnom Penh’s dust and heat. I have unearthed my journal, and translated some excerpts. On a side note, this was before the digital age, so the number of pictures is limited, as is the quality, I’m afraid. I regret that, and it’s made me realize, more than ever, how much easier and convenient things have become for travelers, nowadays. We can carry hundreds of pictures on a card the size of a thumbnail, as opposed to loading film rolls, having to protect them from rain and dust and sand by storing them in Ziplock pouches, etc. Not to mention the comfort of being able to take a picture, check if it’s any good, and simply delete and start again when it isn’t. But let’s return to Cambodia, in the spring of 1993.

“Pnom Penh is a vast pile of ruins with, here and there, an old, crumbling colonial mansion emerging from the rubbles, a glimpse of splendors past. 

The streets are mostly dirt tracks with some paved avenues and lots of two or three-wheel-vehicles sputtering along as they carry as many passengers and merchandises as possible: strange bicycles fitted with a second saddle lower than the first one, side-cars, cyclo-pousses, and motorcycles. In fact, when we want to go somewhere, we just stand on the side of the street or the road and within seconds, someone stops and offers to take us wherever we want to – for a little money, of course. Moto-taxis. Sometimes, communication is easy, as when our young driver spoke English and explained to us that his parents had been killed by the Pol Pot regime and he’d had to interrupt his studies in Mathematics. Other times, they don’t understand us any more than we understand them, and we have to rely on body language and lots of finger-pointing, as we try to find our destination : no small feat when, like me, the orientation fairy forgot to show up at your cradle. But we always end up where we meant to, if not by the most direct route.

I don’t believe there’s more than two or three traffic lights in the whole of Pnom Penh. People just launch themselves onto the road, and the strongest or fastest wins. To this sputtering chaos, we must add hundreds of ubiquitous white Land Cruisers and trucks with the painted black UN logo on their sides. They’re everywhere. [...]

It is brutally hot, dusty, and a rats’ playground. Lots of signs in French, and lots of French restaurants I cannot afford. BUT there is the baguette – without salt, alas! which renders it rather tasteless. With some Vache qui rit (my food staple, here, along with heavenly mangoes, as the food in the streets is rather unpalatable and boring – I love noodle soup, but to a point), it works fine. [...]

What is striking is how young people are. You don’t see many old men or women around. Children. Women. And young men. [...]

There is a feeling of excitement in the air laced with an undercurrent of fear, as if we’re sitting on a volcano, with no way of knowing whether it is extinct or might erupt at any moment. Hope is strong, almost palpable, and yet shadowed with uncertainty… at the elections, reports of Khmer Rouge bombings here an there, the situation with Vietnam.” [...]

“People are extraordinarily nice. They smile constantly. Children run to or after us, laughing and shouting “Hello!”.”

The picture above was taken by the stadium, where families seemed to camp out on mats. And always, always, smiles and laughter.

And a view of the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, from what was then called Lenin Boulevard.

We were allowed to see the gorgeous murals depicting scenes from the Reamker, which is the Khmer version of the Ramayana, inside the Silver Pagoda’s compound.

But in order to see the Silver Pagoda and the Emerald Buddha, an official authorization from the Ministry of Information and Culture was needed. My fellow travelers were much amused when I devoted the next two days to trying to get said authorization. I ended up having long conversations with government officials, usually in French, and they must have laughed a lot, as they sent me from one office to another, from one ministry to another (Department of conversation of monuments, Ministry of Information and Culture, and a few in between – that only was an adventure, as many of the signs for said ministries were written in Khmer), maybe knowing all the time that I would never get said authorization. I don’t know. I didn’t get to see the Silver Pagoda, but in spite of my disappointment, the quest was fun.

I finally entered the Silver Pagoda, this time around. The Emerald Buddha is gorgeous, but the famed solid silver tiles covering the floor are now entirely hidden under carpets. We lifted a corner and saw a few underneath. Oh well ! I’d waited eighteen years to see them, so the reality couldn’t possibly match what I had imagined all this time, anyway.

And now, a few pictures of Pnom Penh, this time in December 2011.

I loved the energy, in Pnom Penh. The city is very different from what I described in my journal. Except for the people smiling. Things work, the food is great, and I loved walking along the Tonle Sap river, on the Croisette, and seeing Cambodians enjoy the evening as they sit about, watch the world go by, exercise with a boom box or on the machines available to all, or buy offerings for the temples. Our stay there was ridiculously brief – about 36 hours, we spent much more time in Siem Reap – to be able to say much more, but it is the kind of place I could totally see myself settling in.

Next post, we’ll travel to Siem Reap, and again, back in time.