The Long and Winding Road

This past Saturday we traveled to Sylhet to visit the tea estates and spend the night. As you may know it takes a long time to get from point A to point B in this country. We left Dhaka at 7 a.m. and didn't arrive at our destination until after 2 p.m.  The reason for the long travel times is the roads, traffic, and waits at fill-up stations.

The countryside is beautiful and we saw some monkeys as we were traveling through the Lowacherra National Park Before arriving at the Tea Resort where we were staying we stopped at an orchid estate. The manager said there were approximately 100,000 plants . While not all in bloom, it was still quite beautiful.We stayed in bungelows and after lunch the group took a tour around. I unfortunately got sick on something I ate and stayed behind to rest.

Sunday morning after a slight delay due to van problems, we started our trek toward the Madhabkunda Waterfall. This waterfall is famous in Bangladesh and is popular with busloads of Bangladeshi tourists. It was  raining when we arrived, but nonetheless an awesome sight.

 

After eating lunch at the resturant at the waterfall, we continued our journey. Our next stop was at a cousins of Shamima who had built a large bungelow on the hillside. It was amazing and the view was awesome. Although you can't see the mountains very well, India is just beyond the mountains. I could sit and looking at this view for days drinking my tea!

One more stop before beginning the long journey home. We got the chance to see a tea processing plant to learn exactly how the tea leaves are made into the tea. It was all very interesting.

I'm not quite sure when we departed our last site, but the trip home was long and grueling. We arrived back at the hotel at 4 a.m. Monday. We knew we would be getting back late, but no one anticipated this later. However it was worth the trip.