Khulna, Part One - Stephanie

So starting our journey to Khulna from Dhaka, I was suffering from a pretty nasty cold, lots of coughing, no voice, and pretty much tired and feeling bad overall. I did manage to sleep somewhat on the long drive (a feat in itself, considering how people drive in Bangladesh), and passed out on the ferry ride across the Padma (end of the Ganges). But my host father and brother picked me up from the meeting point, with gorgeous flowers and an overall very warm welcome, and an invitation to rest a bit before the Rotary meeting that night. Here is a picture of the flowers received on our arrival in Khulna.

We receive flowers every time we arrive in a new city, or visit a Rotary Club, or tour a Rotary-Funded project... pretty much every other day! It's a lovely tradition, and none of us has ever seen such gorgeous flowers!
So after my rest, Dr. Tonya made sure that I knew I had the option of not attended the club meeting that night, since I wasn't feeling well, but I decided to go anyways to be polite. Holly and Dr. Tonya were kind enough to do my bit of the presentation (due to my missing voice), and I think they did a fantastic job!

Then I went home to make sure I was rested and as recovered as possible for our trip to the Sundarbans!

The next morning we started a little late (compared to our early Dhaka mornings) and we drove in the car to the launching point for the tours of the mangrove forest. My host father brought his son Sakib along again, and he proved to be a wealth of information during our visit in Khulna!
We did not get to see any tigers, which we are hearing is a good thing, but we did get to see a bit of the local wildlife when one of our hosts loudly opened a bag of bread!

The rest of the animals we saw were waiting to be reintroduced to the wild, but we can still say we saw crocodiles and deer!

After leaving the Sundarbans, we stopped by the boat of one of our hosts, since it just happened to be on the way... it was a HUGE cargo ship, loaded up with Jute ready to be exported to Pakistan.

                                                          A picture from the cabin

                                          The adorable son of the ship's captain, playing around
Once we were done with the tour, we had to rush back for a picnic held by one of the local Rotary clubs.
The food was good, the music was nice, but apparently they wanted us for the entertainment, since they dressed us up in Saris and made us dance on stage!

But hey, on a positive note, they didn't force us to sing!
After the picnic we rushed back home to change so we could go see a cricket game! We met the manager of the Khulna Royal Bengals on accident during tea at a hotel, and he gave us VIP seat tickets, which my host-brother (Sakib) was very excited to take advantage of! We were glad he was able to join us at the game though, because without him explaining everything, we would have had NO idea what was going on!

That went until very late, but it was a good time - and the Bengals WON! More to come soon...