Part of the price one pays to learn about Bangladesh first hand is just getting there. The Geographical Alliance of Iowa Group Project paid that price over a 30-hour period beginning Saturday afternoon, Iowa time.
Most of us gathered at the Eastern Iowa airport for a 5:05 flight with American Airlines. We are all geography teachers, interested in seeing places. We had a good start with an excellent view of the green landscapes of Iowa and Illinois, passing directly over Dubuque and its picturesque river setting and less picturesque Rockford before taking a grand turn around Chicago.
A couple of others joined us at O’Hare Airport in Chicago for our 8:15 p.m. flight to London. As those who have flown across an ocean know, the flight begins with a round of drinks before a meal, followed by entertainment.
The American Airlines flight had individual screens and a sizable range of choices, including a map showing the route at several scales and information about distance traveled and time to go.
We reached daylight well before reaching Ireland so those of us with windows, including several of us, had high level views of Ireland and south Wales before getting an absolutely spectacular view of London as we circled Britain’s capital before landing at Heathrow at 9:30, six hours ahead of Iowa.
It was a short night with at most a few hours of sleep.
At Heathrow current realities confronted us. With the security level high, thanks to the recent bombing attempts in Britain in general and at British airports in particular, we had to forego any ideas of a quick dash by train into the center of London for a brisk walk before catching our flight to Bangladesh.
We understand the precautions. The flight to our destination of Dhaka was with British Airways. It was quite different from the American flight in a couple of major ways. One was that none of us had windows and indeed most of us had middle seats. The seats were reasonably comfortable, no problem there.
The vast majority of the people on the plane were Bangladeshis returning home or people of Bangladeshi ancestry returning to the homes of their ancestors. Many of the passengers were children, including quite a number of infants going to see grandparents for the first time.
Our 3:30 p.m. departure meant we had a view of much of Europe as our route took us over the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia before nightfall. By the time we reached daylight again we were over eastern India approaching Dhaka.
Cloud cover prevented us from seeing much until the landing. We could see the interplay of land and water that we were coming to Bangladesh to see. We made it, and we were anxious to get going.
Colleagues from Bangladesh and a tourist agency engaged to provide assistance met us at the airport and whisked us off to the Best Western LaVinci Hotel in central Dhaka. The trip took forty minutes and gave us a quick glimpse of this city of nine million people—yes, three times the population of Iowa in a single metropolis!
We were all struck at the number of bicycle rickshaws being used as taxis. There were thousands. We will provide a photograph as soon as we get some downloaded.
We showered and changed clothes at La Vinci, ready to start the firsthand part of our Bangladesh adventure.