A Brief Sojourn in Bangladesh · by Michael McCarthy

“Fly Trans-Love Airways, get you there on time.”
- The Animals, 1967

On a recent trip to Asia I found myself needing to fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu. It soon became evident there were only two ways to get between these cities, either Thai International or Royal Nepal Air. Brief inquiries narrowed my choices. Evidently Royal Nepal enjoyed the use of two airplanes, one of which occasionally flew, although landings were not guaranteed, and the other was used for parts. The Royal airline had a nice website with a lovely maroon tinge to it, but when you moved your cursor around the site nothing happened. I soon found that Thai International’s site wasn’t much better when it came to dispensing a ticket. It took a week to discover the obvious; Thai’s flights, an attractive alternative to Royal Nepal, were sold out.

In desperation I contacted travel agencies around the world and surfed travel chat sites. To my great relief I discovered from Charlie Connection in Bangkok that there is actually a third way to get to Nepal from Thailand. It is virtually unknown and it involves a catch, of course. An obscure airline named Biman Air flies from Bangkok to Kathmandu once a week but with a mandatory overnight delay in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, including a free hotel and shuttle bus thrown in. Hey, what better adventure than stopping for a day in a place so off the beaten track as Bangladesh, which gets more typhoons than tourists? I dreamed of a warm pool at the Holiday Inn, and cold drinks served up by a tea wallah, and bought the ticket right away.

Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi airport rivals Hong Kong’s for sleek design and sheer size. You could get lost in there for days and no one would ever know. With a layover of several hours I casually strolled the vast building, noting airlines from all over the world – Vladivostok Airlines had a nice booth - but no Biman Air. Eventually I gave up and went to the information counter, where I was informed that Biman’s booth could be found from time to time in Row U, but only shortly before flights were scheduled to depart. Perhaps they paid their rent by the hour and not the month. I walked a mile back to Row W, and waited a very long time, and eventually a tiny man in a terrific uniform with an exciting array of buttons magically popped up behind the counter.

“Mr. Michael?” he inquired.

“Hello,” I responded heartily. It’s always reassuring when an airline calls you by your first name. “All set to fly, are we?”

“Yes, only four passenger pick up today here,” smiled the counterman. “Your luggage please. Small delay only.”

“Eh?” I inquired, taking the boarding pass. “A delay?”

“No problem, only some hours. You check in same time, maybe we leave same time.”

We sat and waited on a bench, in the stoic Asian fashion, like condemned prisoners awaiting our fate. I surmised the airline was trying to scrounge up enough money to buy some fuel. Most of the passengers had their belongings in cardboard boxes wrapped with string, or in burlap bags. As the clock passed midnight, the aircrew finally sauntered by, and not half an hour later we passengers were permitted to board. The plane smelled so strongly of curry you could have flown it on the fumes alone. Faded French language signs and a 1960s zebra décor attested to its likely origin somewhere in Africa. It’s never a reassuring sign to fly on a plane that Air Congo doesn’t want anymore, but we landed with a couple of bad bounces at General Zia airport at 2 a.m., only a few hours late.

I wandered the empty building, looking everywhere for my free shuttle bus, until I found a booth marked Transit where I encountered a large crowd of fellow passengers demanding urgent attention. It appeared there was no hotel and no shuttle to it. No wait, wait, there WAS a hotel, somewhere in Dhaka, but you needed to have a transit visa to exit the airport. The visa was $20, cash only, either in Bangladeshi takkas or U.S. dollars, but this particular official did not issue such visas. No, that was done elsewhere, and a mystery to all concerned.

“But I’ve tried the bloody ATM, mate!” exploded an angry Aussie next to me, “and it’s bloody well broken. They all are.”

This display of anger and logic did not faze the Biman official in the slightest.

“People who have no visa can sleep overnight in the lounge,” he said.

“Look, I have a ticket here that promises me a transfer, a hotel and breakfast, and it says my transit visa has been paid,” I cried. “Look, it’s written right here on this ticket.”

But the official was already turning away to deal with a hysterical lady, sobbing pitifully at the far side of the counter.

“Wait, OK,” I boomed out. “OK, I’ll buy a visa.”

“You wait,” he said. I waited until he cleared all the other passengers, all of whom opted to sleep on the floor. He handed me a chit, a big red plastic token, the kind you get at Las Vegas if you bet the family farm and Grandma’s knickers. Another official eventually showed up in a nifty uniform, younger but in a foul mood. He beckoned me brusquely to follow him down a vast hall, at the end of which two soldiers leaned on a counter, both snoring loudly. It was now 2.30 a.m.

A brief conversation with these customs guards followed, with apparently unsatisfactory results, for my guard signaled to me and we marched off across the vast hall again, rattling doorknobs and banging on windows of darkened offices, as if some visa official would magically appear at this time of night. Much to my surprise and delight a light actually went on in one, where a disheveled man sleeping on a mat on the floor woke up. Upon production of my passport, he filled out the transit visa and held out his hand for the fee. I rooted though all my pockets and - lo and behold! – found a $20 US bill in my sock. It was now 3.00 a.m.

Armed with my transit visa, we headed back to wake Sleepy and Dopey, where things went rather well until I had to write down where I was staying in Bangladesh. I had no idea what hotel had been booked. Despite repeated requests, this had remained a mystery since the day I had purchased the tickets.

“Chit?” said Sleepy. “You have token?”

On my big red plastic token stuffed in my pocket, in faded black ink, were scrawled the words Skylink Hotel. Sleepy pulled out a stamp larger than a coalminer’s pickaxe, gave my visa an almighty whack, and pointed to the door. It was now 3.15 a.m.

I started to walk towards the exit, but a firm hand on my shoulder held me back. My Biman official went to look for the promised shuttle. I waited, and waited some more. An ancient and decrepit vehicle finally wheezed into view, a 1950’s era 12-seater school bus shot full of bullet holes and sporting broken windows, with several soldiers hanging out the windows as an escort. It was 4.00 a.m.

With a grinding of gears and steady blasts on the horn we bashed our way through an obstacle course of potholes and bodies sleeping in the street to the illustrious Skylink, whose dingy lobby was illuminated by a 25-watt bulb and a TV was turned to a loud Bollywood spectacle entertaining a fascinated audience of six hairy men, all smoking heavily, whoall turned to stare at me in astonishment as I entered. I handed my chit to a small hairy man behind the desk.

“What?” he said, confused. “Passport?”

I was in a filthy hotel lost somewhere in a strange city in a country I had no intention of visiting, my luggage was stuck on a plane that might never fly again, my onward tickets had been seized at the Transit counter, I had no Bangladeshi currency and I was going to hand over to my passport to a complete stranger? I thought not; I pointed out the numbers and the clerk wrote them down in pencil on a scrap of crumpled paper he found in his pocket. I was handed over to a busboy who led me to a tiny elevator reeking of cigarette smoke. The hotel room itself reeked so badly I might as well have been sleeping in an ashtray with a roof on it. Despite the incredible heat and overwhelming stench, all the windows were locked tight.

“Air conditioner?” I asked, pointing to a large white box high up in the single window.

The busboy stacked my pillows into a pile, jumped up on them to reach the box, and starting pounding at various knobs in a pathetic pretence that the machine worked. I noticed a large fan on the ceiling, a huge apparatus the size of a cargo plane propeller, and saw a panel of a dozen or so buttons on the wall, and started stabbing at them in the vague hope that one might function. With a deep-throated roar, the fan leaped into life like an angry tiger emerging from its den. Evidently there was only one speed - takeoff velocity - and soon we were airborne with clouds of smoke, cigarette butts and dust swirling through the air like a desert sandstorm. It was 4.30 a.m.

By this time I had to pee even more than I had to sleep. Next to the bed was another door that I thought might be the bathroom. I opened the door, and there was a man standing there with a big smile on his face.

“Who is this?” I inquired of my busboy.

“Cleaner, sahib,” he replied.
“A cleaner?” I inquired. “This room hasn’t been cleaned since the day it was built and you are cleaning it at this hour?”

It was only when I collapsed on the bed that I noticed there were no sheets. Instead, a thick wool blanket, the itchy kind shed by ill-tempered sheep, had been tossed over a thin wooden plank covered in a blackened sheet of quarter-inch foam. I soon discovered that I needed the blankets, because the hurricane blowing through the room was so strong I was soon freezing. It was now 5 a.m.

In the midst of a very profound sleep a telephone rang harshly. I didn’t have an air conditioner, bedsheets, TV or any running water but evidently my room had a phone. I smashed my shins in the dark trying to find it. A voice on the other end declared “breakfast” and hung up. I had been asleep for 3 hours.

I stumbled down to the dining room and found a dozen men sitting at a long table in their nightshirts, sipping tea. As one they turned to look at me in utter disbelief, twelve hairy statues, frozen into immobility. Three cold slices of half-toasted white bread and a jam jar full of flies sat on the table, my breakfast, which I hungrily devoured along with a small banana that I picked up from the floor. When I was done the statues all jumped up and left to tell family and friends about the amazing spectacle they had just witnessed.

I staggered down to the lobby and quietly attempted to exit the front door where a scowling soldier armed with a rifle directed me back inside. Evidently I was now a hostage, but my plane was scheduled to leave at 10 a.m. so I had some concerns about my departure. I took out my camera, pointing to it in the universal gesture of “will you take my picture?” This proved to be an excellent icebreaker. We stepped out into the sunlight – guard and hostage - and in no time we were both best of friends, he taking my photo and my taking his, and both of us taking turns taking photos of the large crowd of awestruck rickshaw drivers that quickly assembled. I was attempting to negotiate with one for a free ride to the airport – no takas, my friend, but maybe they have fixed the ATM at the airport? - when the hotel bus reappeared in a giant cloud of black smoke.

It was only a five-minute tootle to General Zia International. I waited at the Transit booth to retrieve my tickets when suddenly all the Biman Air passengers - the 300 or so people who’d had the misfortune of sleeping on the lounge floor overnight – suddenly re-appeared, all in a mood fit to kill, shouting rude things in several languages. I was swept under by the wave of anger, buried in a crowd of unwashed bodies, when the magic words were suddenly spoken again.

“Token?” inquired the Biman official. “Who has chit?”

The crowd hushed. I brandished my token, grabbed my ticket and made a mad rush for the plane. Just as we were about to take off, a late arriving passenger was seated right next to me in the last remaining seat. With a light scruffy beard, foul odor, dark complexion, full nightdress and a big red rag tied around his head like an old-fashioned cartoon of a man with a severe toothache, the young lad was the epitome of a country rube. He started to cough violently the moment he sat down, spewing a green spray all over me. (I subsequently developed a horrendous cold that took three months to cure.) A stewardess came by and gestured to the sickly Shepherd - for so I had named him - to do up his seatbelt. He didn’t understand the concept and fought her off bravely when she put her hand in his lap. A steward was summoned and The Shepherd was eventually wrestled into submission, whereupon he started to cough so violently that the tips of his lungs seemed to emerge from his throat, a bright pink apparition from another dimension.

The Shepherd unwrapped his head cloth and stuck it into his mouth, emitting horrible gurgling sounds like a TB patient in his death throes, bringing up large gobs of a strange green fluid and gobbing them on the carpet. I leaned as far in the other direction as my seatbelt would allow, wiping slime off my arms. There was a loud roar as if the emergency exit had opened. Conveniently located mere inches from my head, an elderly lady on the toilet was tucking the end of her sari down her trousers. We made eye contact and smiled.

Upon landing with only a few bounces and an alarming skid at Tribhuven Airport in Kathmandu we all shuffled off the craft, The Shepherd following close behind me, wheezing and hacking reminiscent of Bob Dylan playing harmonica. Upon reaching the tarmac I got down on my knees and kissed the ground. At the top of the steps The Shepherd drew an almighty hork and tossed a greenie the size of a banana slug down onto the tarmac, where it landed next to me and glistened and grew like the baby alien in the film of the same name, crying out piteously for its mother. Watching it slither off in the direction of the terminal, I idly wondered how it would make its way past Immigration without paying $20 for a transit visa.

It was only upon arrival at the baggage carousel that I discovered, Biman Air had lost my luggage.