OK ….. So an article about the climbing scene in Bangladesh has to be pretty short. But I'm feeling proud to have pretty well sussed it out in under a month. In summary, Bangladesh is a huge river delta, most of which floods regularly, and 90% of the country is below 10m above sea-level. Also, there's no rock! Stones are so scarce that throughout the country you can see gangs of women and children breaking up bricks at the side of the road, for use as the aggregate in concrete.
However, always the optimist, I bought my climbing boots and harness out just in case. Within a week I found the Dhaka climbing wall. It's in one of the gyms at the American School, is open to the public on Fridays, and is a pretty good wall. It only opened in February but at over 35 feet, it's a good bit taller than High Sports, and 90% of Bangladesh. They've also made it pretty challenging and my arms have ached for the last two days. A good number of moulds were imported, but this is supplemented using an above average number of locally made woods which are not so easy to rest on. My impossible challenge by the end of the year is to get up one of the overhang routes that only one person has managed so far.
These are quite Interesting Times. In fact there hasn't really been many incidents apart from a number of Anthrax scares at the High Commissions (all mail is now checked for white powder), but security has increased and we get a number of emails to warn us of alerts. It's a Muslim country and general opinion of the bombing of Afghanistan is very understandable. If anyone is interested in a Bin Laden calendar for Christmas, they are all the rage here! This Friday we were warned of pro-Islamic demonstrations and recommended to avoid unnecessary travel. Going to the Wall, I therefore arranged to make sure I had the same cycle rickshaw driver that I get into work every day. It's a good arrangement - in return for providing him with a steady trickle of income, he looks after me by steering well clear of potential trouble.
I've also made it up to the highest spot in Bangladesh at 1230m, during a project field trip to the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) to assess the water schemes installed under our programme. The area is beautiful with steep, jungled hills and a huge lake– access to the tribal villages involved boats and trekking. Okay, so I'm not sure that the Hill Tracts can really count as climbing….. but it nearly wrecked the 5 plainlanders from Dhaka that I wastravelling with. This is no exaggeration, they had never walked on a slope before…but staunchly survived (despite serious fainting, vomiting, tears and falling off tracks)! Due to the kidnapping of 3 foreigners earlier this year, permission for foreigners to enter the CHT is only just allowed again and I had to be registered by the police throughout for safety reasons. Since I shared a room with one of my female colleagues (and "Morag" isn't the most world-recognised of names), this resulted in the police arriving in the middle of the night and demanding to know why a foreign man had been allowed to share with a Bangladeshi girl. Morality is strong here, as reflected by the rules posted on the back of our hotel room door, example "Anti-social behaviour and political gossiping are prohibited".
Well I think I have overrun on what was intended to be a short article. Anyway the last thing that can be said about Bangladesh climbing, is that on a cheap local flight, one can get to Nepal a lot faster than youwould get from East Grinstead to Cornwall!
All the best,
Morag.