On the road and water to Barisal

Leaving the Sundarbans area we headed in NE direction to Barisal, and of course there was a lot of color on the road with people living there everyday lives in small villages that we drove by and also walked around….

We had the chance to stop by one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites which is aptly named Mosque City of Begharat and was a mosque(s) from 500 years ago in a small village that was nicely preserved. There are different smaller mosques in the surrounding areas that are built into neighborhoods and has been given the name by Forbes as one of the “Lost Cities.”  The architecture was from the Mughal Empire who ruled over this region and India and shows a Bengal variant of  Indo-Islamic architecture.

While waiting for the passenger river boat, I noticed a baby kept staring at me through some bars, so I took it upon myself to take some pictures of the little guy with his mom and some other onlookers that came out quite nice as I finally got him to crack a smile.  If you notice the mark on his forehead, it is an old superstition that says this mark will protect them from bad things in life….

The highlight of the day came with a cruise on a local passenger ship on the river Morolgonj.  We boarded at a small station with many locals and talked with many people (or tried to have conversations).  As we boarded the ship we were on the top deck away from the massive crowds as we saw how people lived on the river banks as well as the fishing they did in their daily lives.  We met a Bangladeshi family that lives in the US that had two kids who attend school there and talked with them for the ride as we took pictures of the land and the water

The sunset was a lovely one from the boat deck as it had rained for a couple hours very hard (as this is monsoon season).  As we got close to docking, the rain and the dark clouds disappeared as the sun slowly setting off in the distance gave us a great glimpse of a beautiful sunset