While I was preparing myself to write the second part of the story, this song name ventured my mind..."Morning has broken", by Cat Stevens. Cat Stevens is not a musician of our time. Infact, he was never a too popular musician, even during the peak of his career. However, he received a lot of media interest when he adopted Islam and became Yousuf Islam (not 100% sure about the name). Recently, he was denied VISA when he was going to Europe (again, forgot the exact place), and he made newspaper covers again. I really like his singing style, and the song "I Love My Dog" has made it into my all time favorite songs list.
The next morning, I woke up to the sound of my cell phone alarm, at 6 AM. However, despite of my earnest efforts, I couldn't get up before 6:20. I was supposed to reach Mouchak market by 6:45, and meet up with Shujit and Tushar, but when I boarded the Rickshaw, it was 6:52. I called Shujit and asked him to wait a bit. I was feeling really ashamed, cause I always tend to boast about my ability of "meeting deadlines". However, when I reached there, I found out that Tushar hasn't arrived yet. We got ourselves in to a Black Cab (me, Shujit, Tushar and Ashik), and reached Mohakhali bus stand at around 7:15 AM. Afzal and Pintu took a long time to arrive, and we were delayed by almost an hour.
My pals told me that it'd be bitterly cold in Mymensingh and Netrokona, and I have a thing against cold. It's not the feeling of cold that annoys me, but my tendency of catching a cold is more of a pain to me. That very morning I delivered about 10 full scaled "Hachooh's". So I wore a thick t-shirt, a sweater, and a jacket on that....lol...just to combat out of Dhaka cold. I also had my Muffler and Monkey Cap (that I borrowed from Murshid) with me. Murshid was supposed to join us, wearing that very monkey cap...but alas...he had to stay back due to a final exam. I know he wanted to go, but it'd be a risky venture to go on a trip like this, just 5 days before the last exam before one's graduation. Failing this exam means he'll have to wait a full more year before he can pass out.
It was, indeed a cold morning....but not as cold as it could have been...especially if I were living in Canada or England. Infact it was a bit humid inside the "Shoukhin" bus. The bus wasn't literally shoukhin....the company's name was shoukhin. Anyways, the journey wasn't that much interesting. We did pass a number of jokes and shared some laughter, but most of us were still trying to compensate the lost morning sleep. After 2 hours or so, we reached the Mashkanda bus stand in Mymensingh town.
It was a De Ja Vu for me. I visited Mymensingh and Netrokona in 2003, too....with my IBA friends. That journey was awesome, too. We reached Tushar's brother in law's home via Rickshaw. Milon bhai greeted us cordially, and led us inside. There we met Tushar's brother Shishir and his friend Asif. They also arrived on the same day. We dropped our bags, washed our eyes and feasted upon Muktagacha's monda and Malaikari. Shorty after, we were treated to an extensive breakfast. The menu was really good, but the meat was a bit cold.
We headed off towards Gajni forest resort after breakfast. The dulabhai of Tushar had a microbus rented for us. The journey towards Gajni was somewhat colorless. The driver drove quite roughly, and the journey was bumpy. As we had a late breakfast, we weren't feeling hungry at all. Finally, at around 4 PM, we reached the place.
We were quite tired, but the tiredness faded away as soon as we got down from the car. There was a tiny lake resort beside us, and the evergreen rainforest was clearly visible. We decided to give the highlands a visit. Well, they were not actually mountains or anything like that, but climbing up the highlands gave us a mountaneer feeling. There weren't any tall trees there...mostly bushes and lots of dry land around. Some of the local people advised us not to go too far, as we could get close to the Indian border. According to them, the BSF people tries to do shooting practice if they see any intruders.
Anyways, as we were walking forward, all our cell phones (except the ones with Grameen) lost network. I had three layer of "protection" with me....a sweater, a jacket, a muffler, and a monkey cap, which I borrowed from the friend who missed out the journey. As we were climbing up, things started to get heated up. Surprisingly enough, the sun was burning over our heads. Throughout the whole journey, that was the only time when it really felt hot. Soon I got rid of all the warm accessories.
There was no network for our cells, when we were lower. But near the peak, the GP users were blessed with a 50% network. Suddenly I received an SMS from an unknown colleague. All of our employees numbers start with a "017150" so it's easy to know whether someone's a colleague or not. It was my vacation period, I had 4 type of clothings in my hands, and I was sweating all over--not a very good time for being attacked by a colleague. The SMS said "please call". He was not from my department, but he/she could be someone important. I tried hard to make a call, and managed after 5-10 attempts, and what did I find out? Here's this annoying guy who missed out a meeting, who now wants to get updated about the proceedings. Fortunately, I was able to divert him to another colleague of mine....phew!
Two people were making some really cacophonous sounds, which I guess they were claiming to be songs. That "music" was being played with a high volume, using microphones hung up high, attached with bamboos. I had no idea why this irritation was going on, but later on I found out the reason.
On our way up, Afzal was leading us. Suddenly he took a route, which became really dangerous. I mean it was not actually dangerous, but the bushes started becoming thicker and I had to push the lowered down branches quite often. The mixed smell of wet soil and tree (don't ask me what tree...I dunno) was quite refreshing, but after a while it started getting over my nerves.
30 mins passed, and we reached a dead end! There was this route where the road got split in two separate paths. Afzal led us through this long, gruelling path, and it's a dead end. We really got annoyed, and had to start our journey back. That was the time when we first realized the usage of the music. We started heading off towards the source of the music, and we finally got out of the jungle. Annoying, but useful.
before going back, we stopped in a really nice place from where we could see India. The mountains in the other side of the border were really looking like mountains, and we were saying that Indians took all the beatiful things and left the less attractive ones for us. We took a lot of pictures there, and I hope someday I might be able to post them here.
We got down, and reached towards the adjacant lake resort. There were some pedal boats over there, and a small restaurant. 4 people could ride one boat. We were 8 (excluding the driver), and we rented two boats. Me, tushar, his bro and his friend rode one boat while the others were in another. We used the pedals in turns, and we even had a mini race. It was fun. There was a small land in the middle of the lake. Okay, here's one point of clarification..calling that land an island, and also the small thing a lake are both insults to the words, repectively. But still....
At the end of the boat ride, it started drizzling. Suddenly the weather was changed, and a lot of clouds arrived. We got out of the boat, and headed towards the microbus. We rode the microbus, and headed towards something which looked a lot like a watch tower. The driver told us that we could get on that tower and take pictures. It gives a nice view. We had to give Tk 10 each for getting on top of that thing. It was annoying, but necessary. If it were free, a lot of people would be there all the time. It was a six storeyed tower, but there were no platforms in between....just stairs.
The tower gave us some of the best viewing pleasuresof our whole trip. It felt so nice looking around from there. It was raining, and I could see the rain drops falling on the soil, the fields, and the microbus's windshield. We stayed there for a long time. After taking a lot of pictures, we headed back towards the lake resort(!).
Stopping there, we took out our lunch boxes, and started eating. The rice was cold, and the chicken was not that tasty. But as it was late in the afternoon, we were really hungry and most of us ate at least 50 percent of the lunch. The rest one to 3 lazy looking dogs, and a couple of kids whom brought water for us. We had a bottle of mineral water with us...we drank from it, and we washed our hands using the other water. The kids seemed really happy after getting the leftovers. It's such a sad thing..:-( there are so many poor people in our country.
After the lunch, we felt like drinking some tea, but the nearby food stalls didn't offer tea. We had to take a short walk, and then we found another set of shops selling tea and other Bangladeshi snacks. While I was settling for a cup of Raw tea, I saw Ashique ordering fried eggs and parata. I was kind of amused, because we just had lunch. But when I saw him ordering it again (yeah, same fried eggs and parata), I though I should give it a try, too. I was not the only one, all of us ended up eating that same meal. The "chacha mia" shopkeeper ended up selling 22 eggs to us! Never in my life I have eaten something that fresh. The eggs were getting fried in the huge saucepan, and instantly getting transferred to a piece of paper and getting served. We didn't even sit down. Right now, when I'm writing this, I feel the salivas are getting active in my tongue, again!
After the extended lunch and bill payment, we decided to start for our next destination, Shujit's uncles home at Netrokona. The route would be:
From Gazni to Mymensingh, Mashkanda Bus Stand (via microbus)
From Mashkanda to Netrokona town (via local bus)
From Netrokona town to Sujit's home (via Rickshaw)
We expected to reach there by 10 PM. The last bus from Mashkanda would set off at around 7:30 PM, so we needed to hurry.
Why bid the last farewell to Gazni by urinating behind a deserted shop...ahem...and got ourselves on the microbus.
The sun had set, and the next phase of our journey just began!
