Parabat 9 to Barisal

International Women's Day was approaching, and a friend of mine (Paola) tried to drum up interest in visiting a Women's boat race near Barisal.  I immediately said yes, but the number of interested ladies was pretty low..so husbands came too.

We hoped to get first class tickets in advance on the Rocket boat to Barisal, since we knew that the sea plane was not an option as it was undergoing maintenance. Apparently tickets are not sold very far in advance, as they are kept reserved for government use.   Several attempts (not on our part) succeeded in getting the tickets that were needed.

The first part of our journey was pretty memorable.  Gulshan to Sadharghat shouldn't take more than 2 and a half hours.  It did.  The last half an hour, when two of our party were already on the boat. the three of us in our car were getting increasingly nervous that we would miss the 20:00 boat. I tried to tell myself that if we missed it and had to catch the next one it would just make the story more interesting.  Luckily the Parabat was still at the ghat when we got there.

daylight pic of Parabat 2

We were on Parabat 9, one of the many boats which go up and down the river. We were a bit concerned about our cabins, two doubles and a single as the numbers we had been given were 85, 86 and 9, and we didn't want Paola who was travelling solo to be far away.  In true ?what? style they were all adjacent to each other. And in typical why did we worry way, the boat set off a 21:20....

Paolas pic  Outside our cabins

Second class twin cabin

  

relieved to be on board and enjoying light refreshments!

 

lower deck

next door at the ghat - the boats are parked very close to each other

 

 

at the front

looking down at the ghat in Dhaka

 

At 4 am there was a lot more noise (more is relative - it was noisy all night outside our cabin) - and we docked.  Lon and I flung on our clothes and packed our bag in a rather sleepwalking fashion.

We wandered out on to the deck and found that our boat, along with many others had flung itself into a bank and that many of the passengers were getting off.  We couldn't really make out much of what our fellow passengers could tell us, but we were at Charmonai which is where the madrassa of a Sunni scholar or pir holds a weekend long pilgrimage every year. Basically a big islamic prayer group meeting.

The photos cannot capture the predawn light, and the fairy like lights of the makeshift tents, with the background islamic hymn being sung.  It was an unexpected and quite exceptional event to witness.

 

 

  

 

Arrival in Barisal