Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2012

Hindu Street is a commercial Hindu enclave in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, primarily and officially Muslim, and exploring this area was the first thing my traveling partner, Randy, and I did on what would be a three week trip through Bangladesh and India.

I was a day late getting to Dhaka; maybe it was kismet. My reason for making this journey was Dad. My flight from Beijing to Dhaka took off so late, when we reached the one stop on the flight, Kunming, that airport was shut down and we could not continue, so several of us were taken to a local -1 star hotel to wait for the next day’s once-a-day only flight to Dhaka.

Dad was a supply sergeant in the US Army Air Corps, stationed at one of the approximately 25 airbases the Allies had setup in Bengal (Bangladesh and Pakistan were both still part of India then) to fly supplies over the Himalayas (“The Hump”) to General Chiang Kai Shek in Kunming, during World War II. My flight out of China was the same route as the return flight of all those crews who flew in the most dangerous flying conditions. The combination of altitude, constant bad weather, and Japanese fighter pilots led to more downed planes here than in Europe.

I’ve wondered what a country boy from south Georgia who did not finish the seventh grade must have thought of a place so alien to everything he knew. He never said much about his service, or anything else for that matter; Dad was a man of few words, but I remember once he said he did not understand how there could be so much hunger when there were cows freely walking the streets. Dad’s been gone almost 50 years now, but a few years ago I was looking in a pocket notepad he had and discovered he had written down the arrival and departure date and time for every post he was sent to, including all the connections for the flights to get from Miami to Dhaka, a convoluted trip that went down the east coast of South America, across the southern Atlantic via Ascension Island, and then through central Africa, Yemen, Oman, and across India. No exposition, few words like I said, just names, dates, and times. Hoping to follow his journey became a major item on my bucket list.

My trip was 67 years after Dad was there, so there are certainly differences, but my hunch is what he found there was much the same as what I found–poverty, poor infrastructure, noise and chaos in the streets, but also an easy acceptance, courtesy, curiosity about who we were, and a willingness to share their world. For the next few weeks I’ll be reliving that journey with the first step being a new gallery on my website, “City, Region, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2012.” These photos are a selection from wandering the streets and driving out in the countryside to see Panam Nagar, the capital of the fifteenth-century Bengal ruler Isa Khan, an elaborate place mostly abandoned now.

To see the gallery, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000xJrK3P2v4ek