“So, what was it you liked about India? The Smell? The Poverty? The Beggars in the street? Or was it the fact that everything was always running late?”

It was a question from my then-boyfriend’s mother that really caught me off guard. He and I had gone to India for a short trip (about five or six weeks, if I remember right) after a series of natural disasters in December of 2009 derailed our plans to spend the holiday backpacking the Philippines (eventually I will get to you, ‘pines, floods or no floods….). It sort of caught me off guard, first of all because he and I, despite coming from very different backgrounds of socioeconomics, enjoyed the trip a great deal (His parents had a combined income of around a million and lived a life of the upper class, when they were working, while my single mom of about 95,000, and is determined to present herself as a struggling middle class single parent… so while there is a difference don’t get me wrong in acting like I am not a child of privelage).

Obviously we didn’t see anywhere near all of India in that short period of time, but what we did see made me want to go back again, which, while Bangladesh is obviously not India, I feel like in some ways I am right now. No one but a few hyper-nationalists would argue against the statement that the Indian subcontinent has many aspects of its culture which are relatively universal. The mixing of religions relatively seamlessly (modern day Pakistan and Indian/Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir being exceptions), the dress, physical appearance, vestiges of British Imperialism (railways, strictly defined senses of class, expat communities with their fingers on the pulse of power), and of course, the food (Indian food is second only to middle eastern food in my book).

I guess the reason I compare Bangladesh to India is that I don’t know of anyone else who has been here, but I know a ton of people who have been to India… it is one of those destinations that is on almost every real traveller’s list. So, in an effort to explain what Bangladesh is, or, rather, what backpacking Bangladesh feels like, I have no choice but to use India as a sort of Background.

Bangladesh feels, in its essence, like India without Tourism. Which is somewhat hard to imagine, as India has one of the largest tourist economies in the world, which surprised me due to the fact that travel in India is generally so cheap. To be a Tourist, and not an NGO worker taking a break, in Bangladesh is almost unheard of. Hotel owners don’t really know how to handle you, restaurants aren’t really set up to serve you, and while it isn’t all that difficult to get along with English and the simple bits of language everyone picks up while they travel (hello-goodbye-thank-you-bus-train-station-how-far-what-time-toilot), the culture shock of Bangladesh, and the gap between “Western Perspective” and the Bangladeshi world view is often times much more inescapably severe than in India. While challenging, this is also the appeal of Bangladesh. Its attractions are generally much more culture or nature based than India, it doesn’t have the collection of ruins and pilgrimage sights that make virtually every corner of India a backpacker’s dreamland, but the people of Bangladesh are AMAZING. The smiles, the hellos, the general interest from everyone you encounter, even those who are ripping you off a little bit, is something that I haven’t encountered anywhere else in the world. Everyone in the streets today in their holiday best wishing me a happy Eid is certainly a testimony to that.

The fact that Bangladesh, outside of Dhaka, costs about half of what India does (10USD a day is an easy backpacking budget, and you could do it for about half of that, it’s just that Bangladesh makes you crave some half decent hotels with a modicum of privacy) means people overcharging you 50 cents or so a day isn’t all that irritating, although I suppose this could change with a major fluctuation in exchange rates or a rapid influx of tourism. I think the fact that proper tourism doesn’t really exist here is partially responsible for the general interest of everyone around me. I am confident that I have been the first white person a lot of the people I have met have seen, and have sometimes felt like I was being treated like an Alien (which, considering that I dropped down, and will soon take off, in a big aluminum aircraft from a land phenomenally different to this one in almost every way, is, I suppose, forgivable). The fact that Bangladeshis of even the lower middle class generally speak slightly intelligible English means that some level of exchange and communication is possible with these people, as opposed to only with the rich (who, as in India, speak better English than most in the United States). So yes, being here is really nice. It is probably one of the strongest reminders I have received in a long time of “another way of life,” or another perspective on living. Bangladesh is modernizing quickly, with new fiberoptic lines and wimax around the country (brought about through GrameenPhone and the competition which quickly followed it), so we aren’t talking about little isolated villages so much anymore. People have an understanding of what is going on in the world, even in remote locations. Many of them are misguided in their analysis (IE thinking that every Pakistani is Quaida, though there is history to this disdain, that Germany is the most powerful country in the world, or that Cuba is in Africa) but honestly I can’t help but speculate that they may not be any more off the mark than their exponentially wealthier “counterparts” in a small town in the center of the United States, who, as global elite, have exponentally less of an excuse for their ignorance.

The only true downside I have encountered so far is a complete lack of privacy or anonymity, which might be a little bit easier if I wasn’t travelling alone. I have yet to sit down in a resteraunt and have less than half of the other diners drop their food and stare at me, awe struck, as I went through the process of eating my meal. Any walk through a village lands me an entourage of small kids walking with me and shouting at the top of their lungs “Hello! How are you!” Which is awesome. And they are great kids. But if you are like me and sometimes like to sit by a tree or in a field and read or write… well, it just won’t happen in Bangladesh. Which is why you splurge on that hotel with closed off gardens or a balcony or something like that.

I suppose the appeal, and the difficulty, with Bangladesh is that it is so thoroughly un-travelled. The people here are definitely enough to make the destination worth a visit, but it is also very wearing, and the poverty and degree of begging, while not much worse than in India, is something that might be hard for, say, an uninitiated traveller making their first trip abroad. But then again… who would choose Bangladesh for their first trip?

Anyway. I would recommend it for those who like a challenge. It is certainly everything I hoped for and more.

Andrew