Kevin Tiller

I guess it feels like I am falling into some sort of routine, which I always try to fight against. I got up late – gone 8am – and had breakfast and lazed around a bit and walked to the coffee shop for a bit – a quick coffee and update my blog.

Today I went and picked up my bus ticket to Kolkata for Saturday. This was from the travel agent on 6th floor at Gulshsn-2. Then I caught a CNG from outside which is a Bangladeshi version of a tuc-tuc but they lock you in, so it’s like a cage on wheels. Probably very dangerous in an accident ! I wanted to go to Old Dhaka to some of the laneways there and figured today is almost the last opportunity. I got the travel agent to write the location in Bengali which didn’t help much as the vast majority of drivers are illiterate!

It took about 45mins and the cage although ventilated had no air when boxed up against rickshaws and buses. So I felt a bit sick but also had the adrenalin pumping as was well braced in case of accident.  The traffic of course wss insane but resistance was futile. Just brace yourself.

The laneways were actually quite good, and I enjoyed pottering around. I took a bunch of photos.  In general no one hassled me at all.

My favourite photo is this one by the river. I was surprised it was any good as I just took my camera out, snapped and moved on. For the whole trip I have just been using my camera.

I caught a CNG back to Gulshan-1 and went into the fancy new Gloria Jeans not for a coffee but one of the strawberry ice drinks as I was sweating buckets and just wanted to sit down in the cool.

After I caught a rickshaw back to Baridhara and had a shower and siesta.

In the evening I made some dinner in the kitchen then wstched some Tv – stuff I don’t normally see, so I’d class it as educational ie BBC News, Al Jazerra and of course Indian MTV. I also installed an offline Guardian app which downloads updates overnight if on wifi. That will be cool to read on trains etc. I also installed the AirBnB app as I might look to stay somewhere different when I get to Mumbai.

In fact I have barely used a computer the whole time I have been away – just my samsung galaxy smartphone. There was a big report out on the news about the slide in number of pcs being sold. Smartphones are just so cool and sooo convenient.

It was about 11pm when I went to bed.