Cha(i)

Cha in Bengali means 'Tea'. So in retrospect, when starbucks calls something Chai Tea, its redundant; also a little silly, trying to make tea sound exotic (by repeating it?). Anyway, this is from a trip to Sri-mongol, one of the largest tea growing areas in South East Asia. I have memories of trips to tea gardens when I was younger - the tea plantations were like a maze for me, my height barely reaching the top of the plants. We would run around the gardens the whole day, and every time it would be a new path. Now, I tower over the plants, and they seem like dwarf-like next to me - not that I am very tall.... similar to the trees that are planted all over the tea garden. The trees are actually there to shade the tea plants, because the sun in the summer in Bangladesh gets 'really' hot, and tea plants being sensitive gets some protection from the heat and other elements. The thing to note is that the large itself is a tea-tree, also, just allowed to grow without any hinderance. The only reason the tea plantations are small is because they are easy to cultivate.

A lot of photographers make fun of cliche of a picture like this - (lone trees and such). Yes, its not original, but I have another post on why thats ok. As stated on the other post, its still an original for me, and more than that, its a memory frozen in time.

River Cafe

This is a river boat on the shore of River Saree, a small river that leads into the beginning of the Himalayas. This river is rich with sand that comes all the way from the mountains, and boats such as this one collects all the sand and sells it to be used for construction. The men collect all the sand by hand (the water is only waist deep), and its pretty damn hard core, back breaking labor. They are close to shore, but one of the few refuges they have is 'this' boat, which is not used to collect sand, but is used to sell tea and biscuits, acting literally as a 'River Cafe'. Many a times, the other sand collecting boats will wander up close to this boat and rest for a bit while drinking some tea. Given its close proximity to the shore, other people from the shore come over as well, taking a quick tea break in the middle of their work.

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Nouka

The other day, I went to the post office, and I overheard a gentleman ask the counter guy how to apply for a passport for him, his wife and his two kids, and what documents he needed. After finding out the gentleman needed four applications, the counter guy asked if they were getting passports for the first time, and how old the kids were. The gentleman replied that they were 16 and 17. I thought to myself that it was a shame, that a gentleman who had two kids that age, and kids who were 16 and 17 all of whom have never traveled outside the United States. I don't know of their circumstances, so it would be foolish of me to judge them - but this occurence was in fairly affluent neighborhood, and I saw the gentleman drive off in a mercedes (no, I wasn't stalking him - purely coincidence). The United States is pretty big, and there are many things to see here, but I feel it is important to get a well-rounded feel as to what exists outside this vast fortress of a country. Some places are different beyond what anyone can possibly imagine. Being in one of these places is an experience I feel everyone (situation permitting) should have.

One of these places, is Bangladesh. It is where I was born, and until I came here, like the kids from the post office who are 16 and 17, it was my world. It was all I knew. Coming here gave me a whole new perspective - 'EVERYTHING' from the streets, the cars, to the food, the chairs, etc. was different. I do miss my home, and going back there once in a while is very relaxing. I get to view my country as a tourist, and get to see everything with different eyes, something I couldn't do unless I came here and got a new viewpoint. I urge everyone to do the same.

This is a river boat (nouka - bengali for boat), off the docks of River Saree in Sylhet - it is used to collect sand from the bottom of the river, which is not very deep. The boat gets piled up high with sand, adn is brought back to shore, where it gets sold and is used for construction. The sand in this river comes from the waterfalls in the mountains, because going upstream in this river eventually leads to the Himalayas. Before that, of course is the Indian border, and a little bit of no man's land, which is as far as we could go. This place is very peaceful, as villages in Bangladesh have very little noise pollution, due to the lack of much machinery and mechanical equipment. It's very serene.

It's been a while. I made myself a promise at the beginning of last year that I would have a new design for this blog every year - so far, so good - except that last year, I totally dropped the ball on actually posting photograhps. Sometime around June, I posted my last post of the year. Since then, a back problem, amongst many other things were available for me to use as an excuse. Without getting much into any of that, I'm hoping I am able to keep up the posts. If you've been coming here regularly regardless of my posts, thank you for your patience. I'm happy with this new design, and I'm not going to promise a design change next year - I think this is pretty versatile for a few other things I am looking to do, so stay tuned!