Asian Eclipse!

Today there was a total solar eclipse that passed across most of Asia!  While we weren’t actually in the direct path, all of Bangladesh saw at least an 83% eclipse.
It was pretty cloudy here, which was good, because I don’t have any fancy eclipse-viewing equipment (no, mom, I didn’t stare at the sun) but [...]

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Hail Storm in Dhaka

Today it hailed in Dhaka. Who woulda thunk. Turns out, it was also dark at the time (maybe 6pm when I took these pictures) but you can get the general idea.

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Srimongol Tea Estates

Photos from the Tea Estates in Srimongol! Apparently it’s not always easy to see the estates – some of the landowners won’t give you permission to look around – but just driving around the region you see lots of tea. This is tea:

Tea.
So you can pretty much see the estates just driving around [...]

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Srimongol Tea Estates

Today I hoped to post the pictures from the tea estates, but it’s been a wee bit hectic and … it didn’t so much happen. So here is a picture, with the promise of more to come.
Me, checking out the estate. Children, checking out me. Par for the course here.

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Lowacherra Forest Reserve

In Srimongol one of the highlights is the Lowacherra National Park, and we made this our first stop, hoping (correctly) that we could arrive before the BUSLOADS of tourists from Dhaka.  More on the buses later.
The park was quite nice – most of it does not seem to be original growth, but it had nicely [...]

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Road trip – Srimongol!

This weekend we went on an overnight trip to Srimongol! It was a wonderful change of scenery – the region has a few hills and is the area of tea estates, so everything was nice and green and more forested than the rest of Bangladesh.
This map doesn’t have Srimongol marked – it’s a small [...]

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More River Pics

A few more pictures from our mini-river cruise yesterday.
A mobile irrigation system at work, pumping river water up into the rice paddies.

A sand barge, empty:

The same kind of boat when fully loaded. They always look like they’re about to sink. These guys were so low in the water that they got stuck at [...]

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Mini-boat trip

Some colleagues and I went on a short boat trip just outside Dhaka today. It’s always nice to escape the gray of the city for the vivid green of the countryside.  It always surprises me, too, how quickly you live the city and end up in the rice fields – we only drove about [...]

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