Bangladesh first impressions.

An old advertisement of the Bangladeshi Tourism Office says "Visit Bangladesh..before tourists come!". Tourists have not come, and Bangladesh has remained a country in which people are able to be surprised seeing foreigners, able to offer them a warm and deeply true hospitality.

After a long trip crossing the border point between the two Bengal states, one can experience something unusual in such a journey as ours: silence. Motorbikes and other motorised wheeled things are almost completely substituted by cyclo-rickshaws. Of course, buses exist, and many. One takes you from the border to Khulna. Indeed, busy city, but again, busy with human-paddeled vehicles. So one can feel the crowd, but the place is clean and somehow more relaxed than usual in India.

Our expedition takes us to the Sundarbarns, the biggest mangrove tidal forest on the planet. On the way, Mongla appears, a small village grown around an Italian mission, where Father Rigon had built a church, a school and a hospital. What one can see in Mongla is simply a small village. As simple as that, one can feel how life is in a rural Bangladesh. Life does not appear easy here, the influence of the tide is strong, as well as the salinity of the water and the terrain. Flood events keep most of this land wet, and the sediments allow fertile land only for some months. Life is though here, but people haven't lost their smile around here. Not our appraisal only, this is as well the comment of the missioner.

Because of bandwith problems here, we cannot offer any video, hardly a decent picture. The jungle is absorbing us... Soon more audiovisuals will appear here, and they will be surprising for sure.