Dhaka (Bangladesh), main ghat, 1991. - NIBiz Soft

Dhaka (Bangladesh), main ghat, 1991.

Dhaka (Bangladesh), main ghat, 1991.

Dhaka (Bangladesh), main ghat, 1991.

(Scanned photo from an old slide : I’ll post here once in a while some of these old shots…)
Returning to Bangladesh to travel by boat and to see how the country had changed since I first discovered it in 1978 : this was taken in 1991, and the sailing boat far away is one of the last remaining.

… The green revolution in agriculture strangely benefited even more the transportation by boats in Bangladesh : many of the little engines distributed for irrigation (sorts of water pumps), – not so necessary anyway in the south as it is in the delta, flooded part of the year -, were resold to boat owners, who adapted them to propel their boats ; now, almost every boat is motorised (except of course all the little "dingies", rowing boats that we can see here).

Before that, most of the big boats had huge sails (sometimes incredibly patchy), and the medium size boats had rows of workers rowing together in cadence, upright, often singing (sometimes, 20 of them !). One could also see along some river banks other groups of workers actually pulling the boats with long ropes, a special path used by them since generations in some places.

In 1991, I found out that a new bridge had been built to connect both sides of the city and for the buses going to nearby countryside, but it was very far away and this is central Dhaka, even the historical centre, along the river, so the multitude of little boats was (and still is, I guess) regularly used to cross the river.

Bangladesh is a land of rivers, most of the south sits in fact on the delta of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra ; some places are still only accessible by boat nowadays and in the past, most of the travels in the south had to be done by boat because of the lack of roads (and essentially, bridges, as the rivers are so large because not far from the bay of Bengal).

There is of course huge poverty in Bangladesh, but its tradition is incredibly rich ; it is interesting to note that the national anthem of both India and Bangladesh are based on compositions by the great Rabindranath Tagore, who got the Nobel prize for literature :

R. Tagore was from Bengal, before the partition of India and he is still revered both sides of the border, with the omnipresent "Rabindra Sangeet", his poems put in popular songs, known literally "by heart !" by everyone, even the illiterate people (as they are heard by loudspeakers everywhere, nowadays).

That is why the place that moves me the most in south Asia is still Bengal, – specially West Bengal in India, but also Bangladesh.

Posted by © noborders on 2008-09-05 09:08:04

Tagged: , Bangladesh , sailing boats , old scans , old photos , sunrise , golden colours , mist , colours , scans , old , prints , slides , scans from old prints of slides , old photos, old slides, old prints

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