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Mr. Zia, our guide, picked us up at the Dhaka guest house Friday morning to begin our three day driving tour of the northeastern part of Bangladesh before we head to Chittagong on Sunday. The 7 hour, 222 km drive from Dhaka to Sylhet was the most fascinating road experience Kevin and I have ever had, anywhere in the world.
Getting out of Dhaka alone took over two hours. Bumper to bumper doesn’t even begin to describe the traffic here. It is pure and simple, mayhem. There are no traffic rules except to honk as you overtake whatever is in the road in front of you—be it a car, bus, truck, bicycle, mother and child crossing the road, rik-shaw, motorized rik-shaw, man pulling cart laden with any number of goods, cow, goat and/or sleeping dog. Oh and the other rule: be sure to pull back into your lane right before the car, bus, truck, bicycle, or whatever else is in the other lane, barrels into you.
Natural selection plays a part, the bigger your vehicle, the more right of way you have. The working assumption is you have the right to overtake whatever is in front of you and that you dart back into your lane when something bigger is coming at you. This means no looking in rearview or side mirrors. There is no time. Instead, you have to constantly be looking ahead and negotiating moving around and ahead of others while not getting hit by the on-coming traffic. It is assumed that the moving “thing” that is trying to overtake you is going to veer back into your space any moment so driving is this constant, braking, accelerating, honking, veering to the left, veering to the right all over pot holed, rubble strewn roads “activity”.
What’s funny (maybe disconcerting is a better word) is that after the first hour of looking like Kevin McAllister (giggle) in Home Alone (mouth in open “O” shape silent scream, hands to each side of face) you kind of get use to it. So what if your driver is over-taking a van that is overtaking a rik-shaw and your vehicle is way over to the right (they drive on the other side here), on a road with no shoulder and coming at you is a truck, overtaking a bus, overtaking a cow—in the rain. You just know that somebody is going to give way (probably not the cow), just in the nick of time.Oh yawn, my cell phone is ringing – let me answer it.”
And what is even more funny – yesterday was a holiday and the traffic was “light”. Just can’t wait for today’s drive on a normal traffic day.
Oncoming Traffic
The white line does designate the “other” side of the road. And yes we are passing a bus who is himself passing bicyclists and those are vehicles coming at us.
