Srimangal

The mission to catch the bus from Dhaka to Srimangal is beset with the now all too familiar hassles of hellish bus stations. The squalor and deprivation provide a perfect backdrop for the bunch of betel nut chewing clowns who try and get us to board the wrong bus. Fortunately we are saved by a smartly attired chap who is quite clearly more of a devout Muslim than most. He wears his raggedy untrimmed beard with pride and beams at me whilst he holds me by the arm and steers me in the direction of the correct bus. Jude however doesn’t get a second glance. She finds being totally ignored in preference to me an annoying throwback to the dark ages. I also wish that she wasn’t ignored, I could really use a break from some of the “friendly” locals.

Touching down in Srimangal is akin to going up river with Joseph Conrad. As soon as we step off the bus overeager rickshaws wallahs and beggars emerge from the dust to surround us at point blank range. The autorickshaw rank is populated by drivers with sour faces who refuse to take us anywhere at a reasonable rate. All of them are in on this, it is obviously an expectation that ‘rich’ foreigners should pay more for exactly the same service. We manage to get them down from the ridiculous 200 Takka asking rate to the only marginally extortionate 100 Takka. Unfortunately we get the driver who doesn’t know where he is going and we spend the next 30 mins driving round in circles… It would seem we have now had our moneys worth with a brief introductory tour of the area.

The Bangladeshi Tea Research Institute has its own guesthouse which is quite clearly the best value place for miles around. Popping into the Institute we eventually manage to track down the man we need to see about obtaining a room. Apart from being generally unhelpful and only having a room available for one night, when we want to stay four, there does seem to be a concerted effort to research tea going on. This dedication to science takes the form of standing around drinking tea and shooting the breeze, I don’t think I will be holding my breath for the next breakthrough in tea science.

We hop on a rickshaw outside the BTRI and ask the walla to take us to the Eco-Resort, which is number two on our list of accommodation options. Instead the chap takes us back into Srimangal town centre and then has the cheek to ask for a tip... After a bit more wandering around and asking various autorickshaw wallas it becomes obvious that none of them know what we are asking and if they do, they don’t know where it is. With darkness approaching we manage to hire an autorickshaw for one hour and direct him out of town on the road to Lowacherra National Park, along, or off which our supposed guesthouse should be.

We eventually come upon The Tea Resort, accommodation slated in the LP guide for being grossly overpriced. At the gates here we ask for directions and as a result make the acquaintance of Sontosh, an English speaking guide to the area. He jumps in with us and directs the driver to the Eco-resort. With no rooms there either we head, extremely reluctantly, back to the Tea Resort where they have a room available for two nights. At 2300 Takka a night I would expect the following: clean sheets, mosquito nets, cable TV, hot water, a spotless sitdown toilet and breakfast and a newspaper included. Instead we get cockroaches, a copy of the Koran, a prayer mat and directions to Mecca.

We arrange to meet Sontosh in the morning for a day out and about but we are beginning to learn that nothing ever works out quite the way you want it to in Bangladesh. At 10:00am, after waiting around for them to arrive at work, reception informs us that the room we stayed in the previous night is not available for the next night and we will have to move to another room. This room is cheaper at 1200 Takka a night so we opt to move. I try to negotiate a discount for the hassle their mistake has caused (I hope it was a mistake as the other option is that they deliberately scammed us to move into the more expensive room for one night in order to  make more money off us). The grumpy old sod behind the table tells me this is “impossible” as he scratches his nuts, ignores my request and carries on playing with his calculator. He has clearly not been on an Outward Bound course where he would have had that word erased from his vocabulary, or indeed a customer service course. He is in need of both. I don’t mind staying in rough hotels provided I am paying rough hotel prices. Paying swanky hotel prices for a dive with rude staff however makes my blood boil. The Tea Resort is now firmly crossed off my christmas card list.

Much later than planned we head off with Sontosh to Lowacherra National Park. At the gates we watch a western couple in front of us get scammed by a park guide who relieves them of more than the standard park rate and then charges them way over the odds for his own services. Sontosh steers us through this minefield of young city slicker cowboys, fresh out of the newly instigated guide training school, who are quite clearly much better con men than they are guides. The rash of National Parks recently established in Bangladesh are admirable steps by a young country but there is clearly a long way to go yet.

Sontosh’s integrity is matched by his 6th sense like ability to locate primates, the kind of skill you cultivate from 20 years of experience in the field rather than a short stint at school.   It is not long before he has located Lowacherra’s piece de resistance, the Orlock, or Gibbon. With no tail to assist their arboreal lifestyle they rely entirely on their long muscular arms and shorter legs with hand-like feet to get around in the canopy. These guys certainly are the king of the swingers and as we watch it is hard to believe they are doing anything else other than showing off their skills.

After the highlight of Gibbons Sontosh takes us to the Kachia “Tribal Village”. This is a shining example of how tourism should not be done. We wander around slightly perplexed. The indifferent Kachia are obviously used to being looked at like they are a zoo exhibit but it is also apparent that they are uncomfortable with it. I can’t help but feel a sickening reversal of roles, I am no longer being stared at but instead am being invited to be the one doing the staring… Apart from being Christians (they have a very basic church) and very, very poor there is nothing really to outwardly distinguish them from anybody else we have met in Bangladesh. I feel increasingly uncomfortable so tell Sontosh we want to leave. I ask him about the tribal villages and whether or not they receive a percentage of money from the park fees, they do not. I ask him whether they have opportunities to find employment within the park which fortunately they do, although it is clear that this is limited. I ask him about Bengali oppression of tribal communities, something I have become acutely aware of in the past two weeks from the articles in the English language newspapers here, it is clear that here also there is violence and intimidation. Yes indeed there is a long way to go.

After a rather dull tour of a local lake we head back towards Srimangal town for lunch. On the way Sontosh spies some more primates and we disembark for the hunt. We have managed to split a small troupe of monkeys between two patches of undergrowth on either side of the road. They chatter to each other with cat like miaos, emerging into the tree tops to have a look at us before disappearing back into the bush for a think and conflab. Eventually one of them plucks up enough courage to attempt the death defying jump across the road. A short sprint along an increasingly bent length of bamboo 10m above the hard red brick road is followed by a gutsy leap towards a rather bare and twiggy looking tree on the other side. With arms thrown back like a freefall parachutist and tail whipping round to stabilise what is essentially a well controlled fall he now plummets like a brick towards the deck. Crashing into the small tree, spindly branches bend and snap sending a shower of what few leaves remain spinning groundwards. By sheer miracle one thin branch manages to absorb the peak force of impact and clinging onto this with one hand our would be hapless victim propels himself to hero status. He glances over in our direction as if to say “beat that human!” before scampering off into the thick bush.

After lunch we go to check out some more accommodation options for our third and fourth night here. At a guest house on the outskirts of town we are shown two large rooms, both relatively clean but still very basic. When asked for a price they say 2500 Takka a night. We explain to them that we have been in Bangladesh for two weeks already and that similar rooms in Bogra, Dinajpur, Rajshahi and Dhaka would be 500 Takka a night. They confer and come back to us with a new offer, they will give us their “flat rate” of 2000 Takka a night, we smile and leave. Srimangal, with a tourist destination status bestowed upon it as a result of it’s Tea Gardens is not an easy place to find value for money digs. Back in the noisy town centre we reluctantly check out ‘Tea Town Hotel’. They have clean rooms and one at the very back of the hotel promises to be reasonably quiet. They even have cable TV, but the room is only available for one night! Ha, it seems we are clearly not wanted in Srimangal. After some bargaining we get quoted a semi reasonable rate of 850 Takka (thats about 85HKD or 5 quid depending on where you’re from) and accept, we also decide that three nights in Srimangal in three different rooms is quite enough and that we will head back to Dhaka the day after.

To round the day off we go to the Nilkantha Tea Cabin, a gaudily painted road side shack where we can sample the “World Famous” Seven Layer Tea. For 70 Takka it must qualify as the most expensive tea in bangladesh but at 10 Takka a layer it is more than worth it. Layer one is definitely cinnamon, there is plain green tea in their too, amongst a smorgasbord of other flavours that come at you in distinct stages before the cup finishes with a flourish of ginger and then honey. It might well be a showy distraction from the regular and substantially cheaper cha on offer all over Bangladesh but it is none the less a very welcome piece of extravagance.

Our final day in the Srimangal area begins at 06:00 when we meet Sontosh, and head once again into the Lowacherra National Park. Our early start is an attempt to catch a few more criters whilst they have breakfast and sure enough we are soon watching our third species of primate do exactly that. Unfortunately Sontosh is unable to give much information on the different animals we see, not even their names; “Black Monkey” is as descriptive as it gets. More important than that however is his infectious enthusiasm, who knows how many monkeys he has seen over the years yet each time seems like it is his first.

A long drive out in an autorickshaw to a bird sanctuary follows breakfast. It is another example of an initiative with admirable intentions falling short due to poor execution. USAID has provided the funds to build a bird hide whose construction fails to conceal those watching from the birds themselves. Worse than that however is the actions of the clearly uneducated staff and visitors who stand infront of the hide to view the birds and shout loudly each other and into their mobile phones. The end result is a 100m deep semi circle around the hide containing no birdlife whilst beyond a fine selection of ducks, waders, egrets and herons merrily carry on with their business safely out of range of everything except the most powerful of telescopes. Heading back to the autorickshaw I am compelled to have a word with the occupants of a small white van. They are reclining inside with the doors and windows wide open and an amplified sound system belting out a string of Bollywood hits at maximum volume, all this whilst parked right next to a sign that says, in Bengali and English, “Do not disturb the birds, keep quiet.”

Sontosh gives us the option of visiting another tribal village, we decline and ask instead whether we can visit a brick mill. These are dotted all over the Bangladeshi countryside and a small mention in the LP guide had peaked my interest in them. The workers at the mill are very keen to demonstrate how they carry up to 16 newly formed bricks at a time on their heads up onto the kiln. At first Santosh is reluctant but after repeated asking we are conducted up a narrow gangplank onto the business end of the mill. The monolythic chimney towers above us and belches black smoke into the sky as heat pours up through the “roof” of the kiln on which we now stand. This is simply a tight network of brick walls all covered over with dirt. We are lead nervously across the top of this to a man who carefully lifts small metal lids from the dirt. Through the small round holes we can see the deep radiant orange glow of intense heat. The man shovels coal down into the inferno as flames begin to lick upwards. It is suggested that we leave. Having seen what we came for and now realising exactly what it is we are standing on top of and how little actually separates us from rapid immolation we quickly oblige. As we head back to the autorickshaw I am flush with adrenalin and amazed at what we have just seen. This industrial excursion has proven to be one of the most interesting and exciting sights we have visited in Bangladesh and as a result I have developed a serious respect for the men and women who work in these brick mills.