Children of The Sea 10: Owl's Island

Ever since I started writing about this journey, I couldn't wait to write about Owl's Island. Well, don't let the name scare you, because we didn't really see any owls. On our way to Inani beach, we came across a place which was called "Pechar Deap", as in Owl's Island. This time around, we left the beach road and took a rather mountainous road. This road reminded me of Shillong.

I came to know about the name of the area from an old sign board at the left side of the road. I’ve seen a “live” owl only once in my life. That was in Netrokona, the first time when I went there. After a while, we came across a very rough, muddy road. We came to know that it had been raining in torrents for the last couple of days, which made the road look like chocolate spread.

Suddenly, our car got stuck in the mud, and after a number of heavy revolutions, the engine stopped. We all got down, and found ourselves stranded in a muddy mess. I’ve never seen mud thicker than this. Some workers were standing nearby, apparently repairing the broken, mud infested road. When the driver and his companion started pushing the car, I thought they’d join in and help us out. But they didn’t bother, and kept on doing whatever they were doing. Later on, I came to know that they passed an offer of pushing the car out of the mud in exchange of Taka 500.

Soon all of us were down in the mud pile, and pushing the car hard. Murshid and Ashique took the lead, and soon I and Tushar followed. Later on Pintu and Sujit joined as well. No matter how hard we pushed, the car wouldn’t move. Then we resorted to other techniques like putting bricks at both ends of the tire and turning on the engine whilst people are pushing. On such an incident, the tire rolled, and we got mud-sprayed. I still had some hopes of keeping my dress clean, but after that incident, I simply had nothing to lose. I got down with rejuvenated vigor, and soon we were able to move the rear end a few inches forward.

Sujit was the first one to desert the car pushing party. After a while, he left and went to a dry bridge ahead of the place where our car was stuck. We urged him to take snaps of our pushing effort, and also that of our mud stained feet, but for some reason he didn’t take any. After all, it was his camera, and there is a limit of requesting. Someone put a footmark on Murshid’s T-Shirt, and we had a good laugh over that one.

Interestingly, none of us were worried about the danger we were in. It was like something will come up, and we’ll get out of the car. I even thought about deserting the car and moving forward. At one point, almost all of us were standing on the bridge (not really a bridge, just a euphemism there) and chatting. That was the time when we all found out that our feet were looking like a statute’s feet.

I asked a local guy…”Bhai ei jaygar naam ki?”

He replied “Hesaar Dif”

After some time, other cars started coming in, and there was a mini traffic jam at both ends of the road. So for the sake of their own interest, people from the other cars got down and joined our driver. Seeing a lot of people, most of us took a back seat from the action, and eagerly waited for the mud stuck whale, I mean the jeep to get out of the entrapment.

After some high level assistance from some of the more experienced drivers, our car finally got out of the mud pile, we started our journey again. We planned on cleaning ourselves in the Inani beach.

We were already late, and hunger was striking us as well. However, the thought of getting near to a clear sea was more enticing than sitting down and eating. From my past experience, I knew that Inani was a rock filled beach, and one needs to be very careful while going from one point to another. There are heavy, sharp edged rocks lying everywhere down the sea bed, which you can’t see from above, but your legs will feel them once you bump into one. In that beach, there is a place where there are fewer rocks, and the rest part of the beach is rocky. This time around, however, we couldn’t find the place with fewer rocks, and the 30 something minutes we spent there wasn’t spectacular at all. Yeah, we were asked to get back on the car after 30-40 minutes in the water. The reason being that if we didn’t start our journey back, we couldn’t reach our hotel before evening. We too didn’t want these novice drivers to drive us back during night time. We did realize that they were novice, but it was too late to do something about it then.

This time we opted for a different route. We would go around the road to Tecnaf instead of the beach road that we used in the beginning. This would take more time, and hence we started off fast. This journey was fun filled, as we were passing through locales. A lot of local inhabitants were giving us strange looks and passing comments in that same unintelligible dialect. We were puzzled, and the helper decided to eliminate our confusion.

“They think he is a lady, and that’s why they are passing comments!”

We couldn’t help bursting out in laughter. Tushar looked totally embarrassed and humiliated, but there was nothing he can do. He didn’t want to cut his precious locks, nor was he ready for this assault. I was irritated as well, because I was standing next to him. His embarrassment soon turned in to irritation, anger, and eventually indifference.

By the time we reached Coxsbazar, he was totally indifferent towards any joke regarding his long hair. At one point he really got pissed off at us for laughing at him.

When we reached the town, it was getting pretty late. We had three things to do...collect tickets for our return journey, go shopping and have dinner. Angel Drop was considered for dinner again, but we had to reject the plan due to heavy expenses involved. We decided to confirm the tickets first.

We changed clothes at the cottage, freshened up, took some rest, and went out for the ticket counter of Green Line. Ashique was continuously saying that the buses of Green Line aren't that good, and the high ticket price is not worthy. My last journey to Coxsbazar was via Green Line bus, so I had a slight preference for them. But as Ashique was heavily insisting on going for a alternative solution, we went to Shohag for checking their buses out. Shohag buses are great, but the heavy price tag of Tk 400 instantly turned off some light bulbs!

So we went for a cheaper solution in the form of some bus service provider called Hanif. According to Ashique, they have these really comfortable buses, that can be stretched and we can relax within them easily. We also found out that Hanif service was really flexible. Infact, they were so flexible that we could book seats for any bus starting from 9 AM, and there was a bus leaving at every hour, e.g. 10 AM, 11 AM, and so on.

To get some rest in the morning, we opted for the bus leaving at 11 AM. Although there were few signs of resistance, but 11 AM was mutually accepted by all of us.

From there, we hurried towards the Burmese Market. I was on the lookout for something that I really wanted to buy, but couldn't gather courage to do so in my previous visit. On our way to the market, Sujit started complaining that he desperately needs to eat something, and some others also followed suit. Well, I was feeling hungry, too, as we inadvertently skipped lunch that day!

Two things were in my buying agenda, Pickles and a knife. Last time I bought some boroi era char, which tasted great. And also I pried my eyes upon some beautifully crafted knives, but dared not to buy one. Well, that was almost a year ago. Now I am more confident, I was having a great time due to the fact that I'll be soon leaving GP, and things were different as a whole.

None of the knives that were displayed in the first shop caught my attention. I half liked one knife, but the shop keeper was acting weird. He refused to announce a price unless I assured that I'd be buying it!

So I walked on to the next shop, where there were more weapons on display.

I particularly liked this knife, and honestly speaking, I didn't bargain much. The moment I saw it, I knew I'll be going home with this cute little thingy.

Murshid asked me what I will be doing with this knife. I said "Eita diye ghore boshe batash katbo, sideways and from up to down". Haha, actually that's true. I don't spend too much time with this. Instead, I save it for the very special(!) occasions.

Anyways, after buying the knife, I impatiently waited for the others to finish buying their stuff. As I was done with my shopping, I was naturally not that much tolerant. I stopped Sujit from buying a Cross. I wonder what got him, but he seemed mesmerized with the beauty of the cross. I am sure his dad would put a permanent embargo on his outside of Dhaka journey, as soon as he'd discover his son wearing a cross. I also wonder why Ashique was supporting Sujit!

In my last visit, I found out this really nice Achar vendor, who sold some really delicious pickels to me and my companions. It was the only "exclusive" achar shop in that area. Fortunately, I managed to find him out this time around, as well. All of us bought a lot of achar.

Suddenly, we realized that it was pretty late. It was 10:15 PM, and we haven't had lunch, and we had no specific plans for dinner.

So did we spend the last night of our journey in hunger? Did we sleep through the night, or did some wild stuff? To know more, you gotta wait a bit :D

To be continued

p.s. I am a violent manush...stay away from me! I fantasize killing people with the knife all the time :D