(To see these and other shots, check out my photo sharing site on SmugMug, here).

It’s been three weeks since my last dispatch from Bangladesh. I wanted to post sooner but WordPress, the platform I use for blogging, was unavailable. Bangladesh held national elections on December 30 and shut down dozens of online news and internet sites, presumably to stifle opposition.

I’m back in India now and the Bangladesh election is over (the incumbent Sheikh Hasina, the female leader of the ruling Awami League, won an historic fourth term) so we’re back to normal. If India can be considered normal.

I had an excellent thirty days in Bangladesh. A month isn’t a lifetime but it is long enough to get a grasp of a place, at least on its surface. Here are some observations and conclusions.

The Bangladesh people truly are warm hearted, generous and friendly to visitors, far more than in most countries I’ve been. I lost count of how many times locals smiled and asked after me or paid for my tea, snack, taxi ride or bus fare. This in a country where the per capital GDP is only slightly higher than $1,000. It took me quite a while to drop my guard and realize people who approached me had no goal other than to say hello and ask after me.

I was regularly mobbed by groups of people clamouring for a chance to shake my hand and pose for a selfie. Usually one person began a conversation but soon another would arrive, then three more and in no time I’d be surrounded. At times it was overwhelmingly.

I got tired of answering the same questions (“Your country? Your name? Alone? Your job?”), and there are only so many glasses of tea a man can be invited to drink in one day but honestly, people are genuinely hospitable and welcoming, truly welcoming, and I left very impressed with Bangladeshis’ good nature and cheerful disposition.

Local kids at the train station

Me with some of my new instant friends

Posing with the Barisal fire department (who invited me in off the street)

Junior welcomer, Khulna

Posing with rural kids at a Muslim school

It helped that I’m from Canada. Due to a high level of aid and NGO activity in Bangladesh saying you’re Canadian invites additional waves of good tidings. Nearly everyone knows the name of our prime minister Justin Trudeau (recited with varying success at pronunciation).

The rural bits of the country are uniformly gorgeous. Gorgeous if your idea of beautiful is endless fields of green rice paddies, picture-perfect little farmyards peppered with goats, cows and chickens, soft dirt roads meandering over streams and ponds and palm trees swaying against lazy rivers and lapping ocean waves. For a small country it packs in a lot of satisfying scenery. The cities are a mess, dirty and noisy (though tidier than most Indian cities) but luckily the country is largely agricultural so most of the time I found myself surrounded by wonderful rural scenery.

Bringing in the rice harvest near Kuakata

Beautiful tea estates near Srimongol

Fishing boats busy between river islands

The weather was perfect. Not one drop of rain, highs in the upper 20s by day and low teens by night (Celsius. Fahrenheit would be around low 80s by day, mid 50s by night). No humidity to speak of. It’s a different story during the monsoon and summer I understand, but if you’re here in winter you’re in for a treat.

Bangladesh is inexpensive and offers fairly good value. If your thing is cheap, dark, greasy, damp, cramped hotel rooms in noisy market areas you’ve come to the right place. There are plenty of those and sadly I found a few of them. But for a few dollars extra you get basic but clean rooms that are airy, bright and safe. I usually paid around $9 or $10 per night for a simple room.

Meals of rice, naan, dal and a vegetable curry washed down with tea cost about $1.25. Bottled water, pop, coconut water, snacks, fruit, clothing, candy, soap and other daily items are cheap and plentiful. Transportation – bus, boat and train – is mostly slow and bumpy, but it’s very cheap and reliable.

Barge across one of countless rivers

If you can put up with a little adventure it’s a very easy place to travel. There is a lot of transportation in all directions, there are loads of hotels, restaurants and shops and there are a lot of people more than happy to help you out with all of the above.

Barisal street vegetable seller

The walking in Bangladesh is outstanding. Because of the density of population (it’s one of the most crowded countries on the planet with 167 million people crammed into a place the size of New York State) walkers are rewarded with countless small roads and footpaths winding through picture-perfect villages and hamlets all crammed full of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet offering you tea and fruit.

Safety was never a concern, though admittedly the drivers are maniacs. I never once felt vulnerable or nervous or that I was being targeted or followed or in any personal danger of any kind. I didn’t have a chance to hear impressions from single female travellers because I never met any, but other than a lot of unsolicited attention and marriage proposals I’d be surprised if women backpackers would feel worried. The Bangladeshi people are simply too welcoming and concerned that you’re being properly looked after to bother you would be my guess. (I’ve heard from single female travelers that predominantly Muslim countries are actually much safer and easier places to travel as there’s a sense, however unwarranted, that women need looking after and protecting).

Shipyard workers, Khulna

Bus station, Noakhali district

I’m not naive, I’m sure there is a lot of woe in the country, despite peoples’ outward cheer and friendliness. The education system here is, from what I’ve seen and read, woeful. Bangladesh still lags behind in quality healthcare and age expectancy. There’s a lot of visible poverty and the vast majority of rural inhabitants are subsistence farmers just making do. And as we all know there are floods and overloaded ferries that routinely sink and election violence and corruption at all levels that runs marrow deep.

But to me people seemed happy, on the outside at least. I saw a few dust-ups on the bus over seat selection, and a couple of guys at a tea shop got into a pushing match (I gathered over politics) but at the street level there’s very little angst or aggression. People are uniformly caring and tender with children and I never saw anyone mistreat an animal (except the chickens in the market – it’s not a good place to be a chicken in a market). There’s a lot of music and laughter and you see a lot of friends chatting and sitting together sharing a slice of their day.

Local four-legger after a busy night

Vegetable market, Srimongol

In the negative column now.

Despite my raving about the warmness of the people they can at times be supremely annoying. Staring is not a faux pas like it is in the west. I guess their mothers never told them that staring is rude and as a caucasian westerner in a country that sees very few of us I got stared at a lot. I don’t just mean staring like you would at a car accident or a pretty sunset, I mean staring like you’re watching your home team in double overtime of game 7. It’s hard to imagine that I’m actually that interesting, particularly just sitting in a bus or eating lunch but apparently I am.

If you actually do anything – like open a book, or buy some fruit – it’s worse, and you’ll soon have an enormous group of locals standing and gawking and taking photographs. I made a point, as often as I could muster at least, of saying hello to people and engaging, otherwise I feel like I’m a celebrity dodging the paparazzi and it soon becomes soul draining and you miss the point of actually visiting a place. But it’s trying to be sure. You have no privacy whatsoever once you step outside your hotel room (and if you don’t lock your door not even then! Several times before I learned to always lock my door it would just swing open unannounced and in would walk a hotel worker to have a visit).

It can be hard to see a new culture through the eyes of a local and leave your western conditioning behind. Bangladesh is a place where there’s very little personal space or privacy, and where spitting, nose picking, staring, queue jumping, ball scratching and littering are acceptable.

I think a lot of westerners, when visiting places like India and Bangladesh, have the idea that locals are rude to spit and stare and are uncultured and selfish. But that’s looking at it using our own yardstick and it’s not the case. Behaviours and cultural norms are not transferable. Being bothered and feeling frustrated by what people in Bangladesh do is our problem as visitors, not theirs as owners.

Still though, my patience was sorely tried but I like to think I was found not wanting. It’s a skill we travelers need to continue to hone and develop.

Children of tea pickers, Srimongol

Also in the against column, outside the very largest towns and cities it’s difficult to find anything remotely luxurious or even just of high quality. It’s not like India where you can splurge now and then on a better quality hotel, or a meal of something other than Indian food; Bangladesh simply doesn’t have that much variety. In most places it doesn’t matter how much money you wave around you’re just not going to find anything other than the basic level of the same old things you find in other towns.

Not everything in Bangladesh is beautiful

The country is extremely monocultural, at least superficially in the eyes of the western traveler. Everyone speaks the same language, there’s little variety in the food (notwithstanding my sticking to a vegetarian diet as I always do in places like India), most people share the same religion, and the towns and cities have the same selection of shops and look & feel. Dress is very similar. Habits seemed the same, and there are no visible minorities or anyone even remotely different looking.

I’m generalizing and looking through an outsider’s eyes of course; if you’re Bangladeshi you’ll notice far more nuances in the regional language and culture I’m sure but for the westerner, compared with Europe or Thailand or Turkey or Mexico there’s not much of a mosaic.

Snack stall, Tetulia

English is not widely spoken and few signs anywhere are in English, unlike in neighboring India, so it can be very difficult to find information or converse with locals. I met several people who spoke English well – poet and teacher Alock in Bogra; activist and journalist Rupom in Thakurgaon – and learned a lot from them in a short period of time, but normally it was tougher going. I picked up a few dozen words and phrases in Bangla which helped tremendously and normally brought even more attention and photo opps.

I only saw three westerners the entire time. One guy standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus (I presumed) and an Australian couple in Srimongol with whom I chatted for a grand total of five minutes. Consequently I was starved for English conversion and often a bit lonely in the evenings. Alcohol is illegal in Bangladesh so there are no bars where you can go to strike up a conversation with a local. (There actually are bars in a few high end hotels and clubs exclusively for visiting foreign passport holders, but I wasn’t in any of those places).

Despite large gains over the past few years Bangladesh is still a very poor country. With that comes the problems poor countries have: lack of good hygiene, poor civic order, environmental problems, pollution and general mayhem.

But I thought the positives outweigh the negatives. I’d recommend Bangladesh for those who’ve been to India before and are looking for a slightly familiar alternative or simply want to get off the tourist trail in this part of the world.

You can enjoy a beautiful country whose people welcome you and will spend what little money they have to buy you a glass of tea with no expectation of return other than you spend a few minutes with them and shake their hand and ask their name.

There are not a lot of places like that left, so come and see it while you still can.

Happy New Year and thanks for following along.

Stay tuned!