September in Istanbul

As the glorious summer of 2014 started to fade and cool and the leaves became tinged with an autumnal brown, I waved goodbye to home yet again, this time jetting off to cosmopolitan Istanbul.  The reality of a posting to a city where other people pay to come on holiday is an existence very different to that which I’d experienced before. In short, Istanbul is a gem. It’s easy to get around, plenty to see, spectacular views, bars, good food, good coffee and for now at least, weather to die for.  Istanbul is not al all typical of the rest of Turkey and I’m staying in the swanky Beyoglu area, akin to Covent Garden, with prices to match, but my first couple of weeks here have been spent getting to know the city and its eccentricities. My ten minute walk to work passes posh hotels, coffees shops and convenience stores, until a dazzling view opens up far away down to the shimmering Bosphorus and beyond, the minarets of countless mosques dotting the skyline.  That view, every single morning, is enough to take your breath away.

Istanbul is a bizarre mixture – very westernised, with smart shops selling every conceivable item and more; swanky restaurants with trendy roof terraces; perfect for a beer watching the sun go down; to local joints selling fantastic delicious Turkish food, great Mediterranean delis, their wares displayed in a riot of exotic colours; hundreds upon hundreds of cay (tea) bars, girls in miniskirts brushing shoulders with burkha-clad ladies, neither seemingly batting an eyelid.  It’s truly a fusion of East and West.

Everywhere people drink tea, a Turkish institution – served in small shot glasses, black, with sugar cubes in the saucer and often a square of Turkish delight on a cocktail stick.  The men sip their tea whilst playing endless games of backgammon, seated on tiny low stools.  Of course there’s always Turkish coffee, strong and sludgy in a tiny cup resting in a beautifully intricate silver holder adorned with a miniature lid.

It’s easy to play tourist in Istanbul. There is so much to see – but a horde of other people intent on seeing it too. The main sights are in Sultanahmet over the Golden Horn, home to the Blue Mosque, Cisterns, Spice Market and Grand Bazaar:  predictably atmospheric and bustling.  Then there is funky Chihangir, full of trendy cafes, boutiques and antique shops.

One of my favourite things to do is to take a trip into Asia – this exotic journey is no more involved than hopping on a ferry which crosses over to another continent in a mere twenty minutes, passing rows of cormorants standing to attention on the breakwater and, if you’re very lucky, a dolphin.  The ferry drops off at Kadikoy, full of great food shops and bustling restaurants.  The waterfront is superb, ferries constantly coming and going, fresh mackerel being grilled on braziers, its aroma enticing you to buy the most delicious crusty mackerel baguette on earth – cay sellers with their tea pots perched on a basin of hot coals and fishermen lining the Galata bridge hoping to catch a fish to sell to the mackerel grillers.

The waterfront is integral to Istanbul, many commuting to work by ferry.  The sea of Marmaris is fed by the mighty Bosphorus, and with the setting sun glinting on the water it is easy to linger on the banks of the river on a low stool with a cay or on a rooftop bar with a cold beer.

There are hundreds of cats in Istanbul. Seemingly, Istanbullites have always been fond of cats and although they obviously breed indiscriminately (the cats – not Istanbullites) they are well fed and not at all shy – cat biscuits litter every street corner and there are water bowls dotted around.  Generally unafraid of people, often upon sitting down with a beer and a cat will march up and plonk itself on an available lap.

So there you have it.  I’m smitten with my temporary home.  Cats, beer, good food, sunshine and a waterfront.  What’s not to like?

Tripping Around

I’d decided I had better see a bit of Bangladesh before I left so I booked on a weekend trip to Srimongal.  Situated 180km north of Dhaka it nonetheless is a 5 hour train journey.  At the princely price of 800 Taka (£6.15) for a return trip I’d booked a first class ticket which turned out to be only marginally better than sitting on the roof of the train, which a great deal of people opted to do.  At least I had a seat even though it was plastic and sweat–inducing, and the view from the window was probably worth looking at, had the window not been so filthy there was no seeing out of it, and it was raining so hard there was no possibility of opening it.  The only consolation was that the carriage was so hot I didn’t feel the need to visit the toilet facilities as no doubt they would have been somewhat unpleasant.

It was an early start, my train leaving Dhaka station a little after six thirty in the morning, but it did arrive in Srimongal more or less on time, having trundled through a spectacular thunderstorm for the best part of the journey.  No wonder Bangladesh is frequently flooded.  Srimongal was wet; I was met by my guide, the quietly reserved Manik, and we bundled into a rickshaw, my wheelie bag propped between us, draped in a black bin liner to keep out the rain, to a local restaurant for a stupidly cheap lunch of vegetable korai.  Then it was into a CNG, plastic curtains flapping as we gathered speed and spraying water everywhere, to the rather splendid Grand Sultan Hotel and my very posh room for the night.  After three and a half hours sleep, I was feeling a bit jaded, and it was still raining, so I ordered a cappucino in their coffee shop.  The hotel hasn’t been open very long and I think staff training may need to be one of their priorities.  The waiter serving me was so nervous he very nearly slipped over after taking my order, then when delivering my coffee he slopped a load of it in the floor by my table then promptly ran away.  Anyway sadly the cappucino was almost stone cold so I had to call the poor young man over again whereupon he stood like a terrified rabbit whilst I tried to explain the temperature issue with my drink.  Eventually a manager sauntered over, listened to my plight then asked aggressively when I had ordered my cappucino. Taken aback and resisting the impulse to tell him I had ordered it half an hour ago and the service had been painfully slow, I told him it had only just arrived.  ‘You see’ he said knowingly ‘I find cappucino goes cold very quickly’.  Ah, the laws of physics relating to hot milk must be different in Srimongal.

Luckily the rain stopped just as Manik turned up to take me on a tour of the tea gardens. Serene, cool and with a noticeable lack of pollution, if a bit muddy, the tea gardens cover an undulating landscape, tea bushes planted in amongst larger trees which was not only very pleasing to the eye but which, my guide assured me, were selected owing to their small leaves which fall through the tea bushes below to fertilise the soil rather than settling on top of the bushes causing mayhem.  We heard an owl, saw a kingfisher and heard lots of cuckoos, we saw the tea pickers who pick off the tea leaves by hand, earning 70 Taka (53p) per 23 kilos of tea leaves; they can pick around 46 kilo per day.  Mind you they do get a house thrown in on the tea plantation and schooling for the kids.  We walked for a good couple of hours, having tea halfway round at the tea factory itself, made in a big metal pot on an open fire,  for 4p a cup, and we inexplicably got a tour of some eco-cottages on wooden stilts. We passed jackfruit trees, lemon trees, lychee trees and betel nut trees.  Once we had exhausted the tea gardens, we hopped into an electric rickshaw, passing rubber plantations bearing the scars of where the bark had been tapped for rubber.  Back into Srimongal to the famous tea cabin to sample the seven layer tea.  I’m not sure how they get the layers to stay layered, but it tastes pleasantly of cinnamon, lemon and ginger as you get through the layers.  A Srimogal institution apparently.

Back to the hotel for a welcome shower and a stroll around the exquisitely manicured grounds, which include a lake housing an improbably large amount of frogs all croaking loudly in a bid to outdo each other.  The temperature was ridiculously pleasant, around 26 degrees come nightfall, and it was very lovely indeed to sit on one of the hotel’s wicker swings, the chirruping of the crickets punctuated at random intervals by a frog, at close quarters sounding much like someone enthusiastically sitting on a whoopee cushion.  I am easily amused.

The next say was the day for a trek into the Lachwarra forest, one of the national parks of Bangladesh and home to the endangered Loolok gibbon, as well as many, many varieties of trees and birds.  It being the rainy season it was also home to  huge number of leeches – apparently it helps to deter them by smearing tobacco powder around your shoes – I avoided picking one up somehow, but my guide was not so lucky.  The forest was lush, tropical, butterflies everywhere and the most amazing noises, the loudest crickets in the world sounding like circular saws up in the trees, strange sounding birds, macaques grunting as they swung through the branches.  Then we heard the gibbons, one family group howling derisively at a second group sounding for all the world like football hooligans winding each other up. Bizarrely we could hear them but not see them, that is until the return leg when we spotted another family group swinging through the trees, eyeballing us, the males jet black with grey eyebrows and the females chestnut brown.  We wandered though a village in the heart of the forest, kids as young as three or four sorting betel leaves into different sizes prior to selling them, and had more tea at a roadside stall from a young lad who insisted in giving me some miniature bananas to eat.  Then it was back to the hotel at which point the heavens opened once more making further exploration foolhardy.

And so the long train journey back to Dhaka beckoned, this time with achingly lovely views of paddy fields stretching off into the distance.  My sojourn in Bangladesh was coming to an end…..

Pastures new....

Time is racing on apace in Dhaka and the seasons are definitely on the move.  It started with impressive thunderstorms, preceded by fierce winds stripping leaves and branches off trees.  The rain cools things down nicely, but it’s not long before the heat is back, the humid air making the temperature seem higher than it actually is.  Just after the rain has stopped its beautiful, like a summer morning in Greece.  The TV warned of the threat of tornadoes, and walking to the supermarket the other day, out of nowhere, the wind whipped up, clogging every pore with Dhaka dust and collecting rubbish and debris, flinging it high in the air in disconcerting circles.  And there is a lot of rubbish to fling. After about 5 minutes the wind suddenly dropped, and that was that.

It’s hard enough to cross the road in Dhaka without bits of rubbish being flung at your face like washing on a line.  The traffic is bad, but that is no news.  There is a lane for traffic going one way, and a lane for traffic going the other way, but this rule is seldom observed. Central reservations are at least eighteen inches in height, and punctuated by large uncovered holes leading down into steep drains, or in some cases, lined with crude barbed wire fences.  But before you can negotiate all that, there’s the constant stream of hawkers who descend as you’re waiting to cross the road, usually kids selling stickers or plastic windmills, or men laden with kitchen accessories in their heads.  Once they’ve been fended off and there is break in the traffic, inevitably a rickshaw or tuc tuc will stop dead in front of you plying their trade and before you can weave around them the next wave of traffic is bearing down.  It’s best not to be in a hurry.

Talking of rickshaws I took the plunge with my first rickshaw ride and now I’m hooked. I’d been subjected to constant warnings against taking them, not only are you a sitting target for any thief who fancies helping themselves to your phone or wallet, but the complete disregard of drivers for even the most rudimentary traffic laws males you rather vulnerable sitting atop a little open wooden carriage.  Throwing caution to the wind I decided to take part in a rickshaw treasure hunt – clues dotted around Dhaka that needed to be found.  The first clue was easy as frankly we just followed everyone else but the second clue was where we came unstuck.  It should have been easy; all we needed to do was find Road 46.  Now, the roads in Dhaka are arranged in a grid system, and numbered in a sequence which for the most part is logical.  For the most part.  Our rickshaw driver, an extremely wiry not so young chap, as it turned out had no idea where Road 46 was but didn’t choose to share this with us and instead pedalled off in the oaddirection of the roads in the 50’s – not unreasonably I suppose, but in the opposite direction to everyone else. When rickshaw drivers pedal they pedal fast and get quite a speed up, bouncing over potholes with passengers clinging on to – well, there’s nothing to cling on to – and shooting out of side turnings into main roads without slowing.  We sailed around for a bit before realising we’d gone down the same road more than once, at which our driver started to slow down and perspire, and finally to start asking passersby where the hell was Road 46.  We eventually found it no thanks to him after almost an hour of bouncing round Dhaka’s backstreets.  Rickshaw man was not happy with the fare we gave him, but I pointed out sanctimoniously that if he’d admitted from the off that he had no idea where he was going, no doubt we could have sought advice earlier and the whole trip would have been shorter. Sadly since my rant was delivered in English as my Bangla is not up to scratch it was largely lost on him.

The rickshaw drivers are generally a hopeful lot.  I walk a lot in Dhaka and usually walk purposefully, head down. It doesn’t stop the rickshaw drivers cycling up alongside, hopefully stating ‘rickshaw madam?’ in case for some reason the idea hadn’t occurred to me and I hadn’t in any case seen the one thousand other rickshaws that had just passed me asking the very same question.

I’ve discovered a new route into town which  involves a pleasant walk along the very polluted but not too smelly Banani lake.  The whole area is full of large gleaming apartment blocks or apartment blocks being built, but in between these and the banks of the river people have set up home.  They live in tin shacks, cultivating tiny plots of land, keeping chickens, ducks and goats, which appear to thrive.  They wash in the filthy lake and their children play in it.  They smile as I walk past. It’s a strange dichotomy of rural life bang-smack in the middle of the city.

The walk along the lake brings one to Banani market which is a good place to buy fruit and vegetables, although the majority of it is knobbly, unfamiliar and exotic so I wouldn’t know whether to eat it or display it as a piece of modern art. Banani market is covered which makes it at least a million degrees inside and a Mecca for bluebottles.  Apart from the fruit and vegetable section there is a fish section – Bangladesh has amazing fresh fish and seafood, rather offputtingly much of it was so very fresh it was still alive, one grinning man putting on an impromptu sideshow by whacking an unfortunate fish on the head with a wooden mallet as I passed.  Further on is the meat section, where all manner of meat can be butchered to order.  Trying to avert my gaze from the hapless scrawny chooks in cages my eyes alighted on the rictus grin adorning a goat’s head, one of a row displayed on a bench, dripping blood onto the concrete floor on which I stood, unwisely shod in open-toed sandals.  Although one could argue that the average Bangladeshi is great deal more in touch with what they are eating than the average westerner with their prepacked joints of meat, and that is a whole huge moral kettle of live fish.

Wherever you go in Dhaka there is some sort of movie being filmed.  Some lighting rigs, a couple of silver reflective umbrellas and an interested crowd, and off they go.  Just outside my flat the other day a scene was being filmed in which the hero – a stereotypical polished male with sleek black hair and oversized mirrored sunglasses, had to repeatedly appear out of the sunroof of a shiny black tinted-window Mercedes, brandishing a large rifle.  If you look closely in the background of that particular scene you will no doubt spot a small white woman fending off a score of rickshaw drivers.

So finally to the title of my blog. Sadly I’m to leave my little apartment tomorrow.  I’ll be moving closer to work which is a good thing, and away from the vast mosque being built next door, which amazingly does not wake me at 5am any longer.  But I’ll also be leaving my favourite haunts like the fruit and veg man, the Nordic Club, Bellagio’s with the best coffee and pastries in Asia, and Banani market and its headless goats.  I shall miss the park with its curious birds – noisy cuckoos, woodpeckers and parrots; and huge butterflies that emerge at dusk, as well as flowers of all shapes, sizes and hues and the curious fruit such as the ugly slightly obscene-looking jackfruit.  I shall miss the guard and his cheery assalamu alaikum, and the lady who takes the money at the public toilets who has progressed from shyly looking through me as I walk past to greeting me with a smile that lights up her face.  I shall miss the beautifully tended nursery at the end of the park, with the slightly familiar-looking spindly-leafed plant in the corner.  I shall miss the oldest beggar in the world who loiters at the park entrance, a miniscule woman with manic eyes and absolutely no teeth.  I shall miss the old folk who sit in a circle in the cool of the evening, one circle for men, one circle for women, and drink tea, and talk about life, one assumes.

Onwards, ever onwards.

A weekend in Kathmandu

Easter weekend saw another couple of extra days off work so to capitalise on this time, off I trotted to Kathmandu. It's a mere hour and ten minutes flight from Dhaka with a pretty impressive view of Everest from the plane window thrown in. Kathmandu is charming - laid back, touristy, hippyish and bustling all the same time. We were staying in Thamel which is the real touristy area of town, and it was a delight to be able to poke around shops and chill out in cafes. The traffic like most places nowadays is appalling, and its a very dry and dusty place, but refreshingly cool and not at all humid. I was staying at Hotel Horizon which boasted hot water and wifi - it delivered on both of these and was in a handy location, but that's about all it had to offer. I had booked a standard room but on checking in was advised to upgrade to a superior room otherwise I would have no aircon. So I did, only to find the aircon didn't work the majority of the time due to the almost constant power outages! The poor old place needed a lot of TLC, but in fairness was obscenely cheap.  

So, my time in Kathmandu was spent pottering from cafe to cafe - I particularly liked the splendidly named Phat Kath cafe- eating lovely food and drinking Everest beer, and shopping - Kathmanadu is one enormous open air North Face hiking clothes store.  One morning was spent learning to cook mo:mos - steamed Nepalese dumplings - along with a New Zealand couple who own a deli and a dairy farm, followed by lazing  in the splendidly named Garden of Dreams - what a revelation and great coffee.  Not forgetting of course the sunrise Everest viewing.  Up at 4am we were driven to the Kathmandu Valley, around one hour's drive from the city; it was surprising how quickly the town gave way to mountains.  We were quite glad it was still dark so we couldn't clearly see the vertiginous drops from the hairpin bends as we wound our way up the mountain roads in our slightly rickety minibus.

At the top it was more than a little chilly as we clambered to a viewpoint on the roof of a strategically-placed hotel - very nice as it was a great view but an odd location to choose as the roof was also home to the water tanks of the hotel which gurgled and whooshed loudly, shattering the silence, any time anyone turned on a tap in the hotel below, which was frequently.  The deal was the sun rose over the mountains to a beautiful view of Everest - tada! - except we just got a beautiful view of thick cloud.  Apparently we should have been there in September.  Never mind, the silence (when the water butts weren't gurgling) and the chill mountain air and the views of at least the near mountains, were lovely.  After a restorative coffee off we set on a trek - more like a walk in reality - through the valley.  The mountains are impossibly steep and resembled knife-edges, yet are still - somehow - terraced in order to grow rice and other crops.  In the valleys there are brick-kilns, in the forests there were jackals (we saw the former but not the latter, and there are villages perched midway up the mountains.  Apart from an infcnt of about two years of age whose only words were 'hello money' and a little girl who wanted sweets, we aroused very little curiosity, the villagers being too concerned in going around their daily business of gardening, carrying huge loads of branches on their heads and digging into the red soil to bring out terracotta to cover their stone floors, a dangerous pastime so it seems since the tunnels are often dig too deep and collapse, entombing the workers.

The rest of the day was spent staring at Hindu temples in the midday heat - the majority of the Nepalese population are Hindus, even though the place has more of a Buddhist feel to it. We partook of a traditional Nepali lunch at the ancient capital Bhaktapur, a lovely place full of old brick buildings sporting elaborately carved wooden adornments.  Lunch consisted of beaten rice, dry rice flakes with a thali-type accompaniment of various curries and pickles and the combination of the crunchy rice flakes and the curry was surprisingly pleasant.  Water supply is a real problem in Nepal, at the time of the old capital's construction massive water tanks were built but since construction of new buildings has now resulted in the water table falling to a lower level the tanks are dry - just a tiny trickle of water emerges from the spout. At one such tank we saw dozens and dozens of plastic water containers lining up waiting to be filled, and at the rate the water was trickling it surely must have taken all day and well into the next to fill them all.  The ladies at the wells in the centre of town didn't fare much better, tirelessly lowering their jerrycans into a round 6 inches of filthy, oily water which was all that remained at the bottom of the deep well.

On our final morning the general hubbub in the hotel woke me early which was no bad thing, since it allowed me to squeeze in a trip to Bhoudanath Stupa which is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Kathmandu.  The idea is to walk around the Stupa in a clockwise direction, spinning prayer wheels as you go.  It had a wonderful and peaceful atmosphere, quite different to the Hindu temples and I'm glad I made the effort to visit it before my little holiday in Kathmandu was over....

Hot, hot hot!

Its as hot as an oven in Dhaka right now. I keep being told by the locals that its too hot, and I guess that really does mean its too hot. Its an energy sapping, torpor inducing heat. In any average year the rains would have started by now, taking the edge off the heat but this year there's no sign of rain as yet and it remains in the baking mid 40s in the daytime, early 30s at night and as humid as a Kew Gardens glasshouse.

There's one species that seems to like the heat though and that is the mosquitoes. Long having ditched my 'natural' (ie completely ineffective) repellent in favour of a local brand stuffed full of toxic chemicals, I'm less of a tasty morsel than I was but this is also helped by Anjeela, my lovely cleaner, who has an ingenious way with a mosquito net. She tucks it in so tightly there is a real art to getting in, the best way without leaving a gaping gap behind you is to dive in sideways, a bit like a jungle explorer parting giant leaves on an Amazonian trek. Once in its like being in a tent and those mozzies haven't succeeded in getting in yet, although its a challenge getting out again come morning. . .


I was privileged to be in Dhaka for the BangladeshI New Year. Falling this year on 14th April, the new year was originally places to assist with the collection of agricultural taxes. This year saw the welcoming in of year 1421 according to the Bengali calendar which is just a few years behind ours. The really great aspect to New Year was we all got an extra day off, and the day before the local office staff decorated the place with flags, balloons and tissue decorations, they brought us handmade gifts and enormous quantities of food including BangladeshI Pomfret and the not very enticing 'rice soaked all night' dish.

On the day itself, celebrations started at 6am in the park opposite with singing, music and a procession, accompanied by exhuberent drum-beating.

Even if I was denied a lie-in, there was a chance for a midweek hash starting off from Dhakas Parliament building, where the streets had been brightly painted in honour of New Year. Of we went along the river which was thronged by revellers all blaring noisily on plastic hooters, mostly dressed in red, the traditional New Year colour. The noise and seething mass of people was a true assault on the senses and an experience not to be missed......

Surprised by Dhaka

OK, so my last couple of weeks in Delhi are sadly absent from my blog, so I‘m afraid you won’t be treated to an account of my fabulous culinary tour of old Delhi’s food markets, scoffing all manner of goodies, seeing the old ornate haveli houses, now sadly crumbling, and climbing up onto the rooftops for a sneak peek at the fascinating Kabootar Baaz pigeon games.  I can’t tell you about my first Hindi wedding, the bride and groom elaborately dressed finally tying the knot just before midnight, and where my salwar kameez trousers very nearly fell down -  I can’t even relate the story of the Indian band’s cover version of Wham’s White Christmas – minus the correct words -  at a dodgy bar in Delhi.  All this became rather overshadowed as after spending five months in India relatively unscathed, I finally succumbed to Delhi belly.  And how.

Still, after a few months at home I was ready and almost raring to go on my next posting.  I knew a little of what to expect, having spent a week in Dhaka in Novemeber, but now having been here a further ten days I can say it really has been a revelation.  Dhaka has the dubious distinction of being named the worst city in the world in which to live and is home to 7 million people and there is poverty everywhere, with a yawning gap between rich and poor.  I’m lucky enough to be living in what can be loosely described as the Diplomatic Zone, which is relatively hassle-free and home to a number of expat hangouts which usually comprise a bar, pool, eating area and various activities like tennis or yoga.  There seems to be plenty going on so I won’t be bored.

For the duration of this posting I’ll be living in an apartment, for the moment I’m sharing with two other ladies, they are very nice but this particular grumpy old woman is way past her days of flat sharing, so I will be glad when I get the place to myself. Situated right opposite a pleasant park so I can even get my walking in, which those who know me well will also know is one of my favourite things in life to do (apart from drinking coffee, chatting and drinking prosecco!)  The park has two lakes, the water level in both being quite low at the moment but I suspect this will change once the rainy season kicks in.  There are six seasons in Bangladesh of two months duration each, and daytime temperatures at the moment are around 38-40 degrees, night-time it is around 28, but it actually doesn’t seem as hot as all that as usually there’s a slight breeze and on top of that it’s not too humid.  Dhaka is surprisingly green and full of trees and the park despite being bang slap in the centre of the city is home to a variety of exotic-sounding birdlife – cuckoos, swifts, mynah birds, egrets, parrots and a black bird with am enormous long tail. I tend to see the same people lapping the park each evening, including an old gent in a neck brace catching the evening air as he shuffles along.  Stay after dusk and the fruit bats emerge, flapping lazily off.  This is also mozzie time and unfortunately the repellent I brought from the UK is about as effective as slapping on cold tea. I am a walking talking mosquito banquet.

As for food, there are a couple of lunch options including the local canteen and I had the bright idea of buying an egg bhuna and taking it back to the apartment with me to eat over the weekend.  Unfortunately the little foil box it was in came in a string bag type thing and as I was carrying it out of the office it started dripping bright green sauce all down the corridor (and very nearly all down my leg). I had no other bag to put it in and it was making a right mess so I’m afraid my bhuna never made it home with me….Instead that evening I decided to try the marvellous website hungrynaki.  For a modest delivery fee there are a whole range of restaurant items available at the click of a mouse. I opted for a roasted veg pizza from the splendidly named Pizza Guy – what a revelation. Unlike Indian pizzas which generally suffer from strange cheese and excessive chilli, this was the real deal.  And there you have it.  Since most of the food here is imported, it’s actually way easier to obtain familiar food items than it is in India, although it comes at a price. Halloumi at £7 a packet seems a bit steep unless I get severe withdrawal symptoms.  However I’m also getting to know the best places to buy ingredients including the splendid vegetable man at the Nordic Club where I bought a bag of unfeasibly long beans for 30p.  Curiously, when I arrived at the flat the office had, unbidden, ordered a huge box of food items to be delivered from the local expat shop: how nice I thought until I realised they had also delivered the £75 bill. Now its no secret I’m a terrible food snob and the food parcel was full of item’s I’d never eat – white bread, sugar, instant coffee, sweet cereals, spaghetti hoops – so I loaded up my bags promptly, and took it back to the shop – knees buckling as I staggered round there in the afternoon heat.  Halfway there I became aware of a commotion behind me and cries of ‘madame! madame!’ Assuming it to be a rickshaw driver touting for business I ignored it but the cries became louder and more insistent and were followed by running feet when a breathless Benglai chap presented me with an enormous lump of cheddar cheese that had dropped out of my bag onto the dusty road.

This weekend I decided to try out the local hash – a running/walking club around various locations in Dhaka. The river Fatki runs through Dhaka and naturally it is surrounded by marshes, mudflats and inlets, no doubt a haven for wildlife.  A huge construction company has started a programme of filling in these marshes with river sand, draining the land, creating first a sandy desert and then prime building land.  It was this area that we walked around.  Each plot over this vast area has been pre-sold at a cost of $70,000US and in a few years the area will be unrecognisable, just another part of the high-rise urban sprawl of Dhaka. With an estimated staggering 44% of the population of Dhaka homeless, obviously something must be done, but it seems to me to be an environmental catastrophe.  For the moment it’s magical, we walked across sandy dunes, then marshes to cultivated plots with locals old and young working the land; women with bright sarees and huge loads upon their strong shoulders, and finally along to villages cleverly built above flood level.  It was a real slice of Bangladeshi village life, and naturally we were the subject of much amusement and excitement, and the entire village turned out to watch.  As the sun set as a huge red ball and I cracked open the first cold beer I felt privileged to have seen this place before it is inevitably swallowed up in the building site that is Dhaka.