chittagong (or birthdays in bangladesh) - december 1, 2006

THANK YOU THANK YOU to EVERYONE who sent birthday greetings!!

this is my first access to the 'net since my last post from the mumbai airport. since then, i've been to Hyderabad in Andra Pradesh, Chennai and Kaliyampoondi in Tamil Nadu, back to Mumbai, Pen and Savarsai in Maharashtra, have flown threw Kolkata en route to Dhaka, Bangladesh on my birthday and am now in a really cool cafe in Chittagong. i'm wearing a lungi, the most popular, lower body attire for men in this country.

yes. i'm wearing a skirt in public. i plan to continue the practice at home in the summer months. these puppies are WAY to comfortable and WAY to sexy, especially on the regally thin, dark men who sail like parades of living flags up and down the streetsides of this weirdly vibrant city. the traffic is even more insane than Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai or Kathmandu. it is, however, less polluted than Mumbai, whose brown sky stretches for miles upwards and outwards well into the countryside. imagine children growing up never knowing what a blue sky is.

anyway, the colours of Bangladesh have captivated me, from the brilliant variety of saris and salwar kameez of the women to the lungis and punjabi suits of the men and to the buses (pink, green, blue). the word "igloo" is used alot here. the Gelateria Igloo is just up the street from this cafe.

because of one of the frequent planned strikes that occur here, similar to those in Kathmandu, we have to carefully schedule our exit (by air) from Chittagong back to Dhaka on the morning of December 4 to be able to return to Kathmandu on December 5. it adds another level of brilliant uncertainty to this incredibly insane journey. i'm learning to accept things as they come in a way that i never dreamed possible at home. and everything seems to work out. especially once i figured out how to tie the lungi properly. :o)

and don't get me started on all of my little crushes. this trip has completely exploded my previous aesthetic.

now it's off for ice cream and a little shopping.

(there were links to all kinds of things in this post that got lost in one of the saves. i encourage you to wikipedia "lungi")