Quick trip to Sylhet

After a week of work that was frustrating for various reasons, I made a last-minute decision to visit Harriet, one of the other AYADs who is living in Sylhet.  I rang Haz Bag on Thursday morning after an encounter with one of my colleagues that left me with steam pouring out my ears.  The idea of visiting her occurred to me once her phone was ringing.  I knew May was also going to visit her on the weekend, so hanging out with the two of them would be just what the doctor ordered.  The 3 or so rings it took Harriet to answer was all the thinking time I needed.  "I've had a shit week, I'm coming to visit."

Now, if anybody reading this isn't already familiar with the geography of Bangladesh, Sylhet is not the most logical choice for a day trip.  If you look at a map with markers on all the places where there are AYADs, Sylhet is pretty much the furthest away I could go.  But, in a way that can only be described as crazy Bangladeshi logic, it works out really well to go for the day as long as one doesn't mind some overnight travel.  The bus trip up was not so great but luckily Harriet was good at keeping me on the go the whole day, so I didn't have time

 to stop and feel tired.

The only photo I took of my time in Sylhet was when I first arrived, at 7am on the Friday morning.  This little fella was asleep on the ground in what looked like a most uncomfortable position.

About 30 seconds after this photo was taken, some smart-arse man walked past and poked the kid with his umbrella.  Which was highly uncalled-for, in my humble opinion.

I did actually get up to far more interesting things in Sylhet than not-so-sneakily taking photos of street kids... numerous cups of cha, eating out, walking along the river, trespassing in a tea garden, purchasing a train ticket back to Chittagong (which was far more complicated than it needed to be).

So after spending a nice relaxing day with Haz Bag and Maysie Moo, I got on the overnight train back to the Shit - sharing a cabin with a lovely lady and her teenage son, who thankfully let me get straight to sleep instead of quizzing me about my name, country and marital status.  The trip was fan-bloody-tastic.  Lying down, I fell asleep about half an hour after we pulled out of Sylhet station, and woke up about 10km from Chittagong feeling refreshed and ready to go straight back to work.  I've decided I never want to catch the long-distance buses in Bangladesh ever again!