Elephant in the Road

Just a quickie....

A few days ago, I was riding the bus home from work, just as I usually do, when we passed an elephant in the road. Yup, an elephant. I don't think that this city will ever cease to amaze me! It seems like almost every day I see something even more bazaar than the last, stretching my perceptions of what it is like to live in Dhaka. I will, of course blog lots more about all the other stuff that amazes me, but for now, I think seeing an elephant in the road is amazing enough, isn't it? So, anyway, there was this elephant. Unfortunately, we had passed it and gone before I had time to get my phone out of my pocket and snap a picture, so a description will have to suffice. I will do my best.

The elephant was standing by the roadside, mounted by a bearded man with a large stick, which he presumably used to control, punish or direct his elephant. Gathered around the elphant were many men, talking to each other, but none seemed as excited by the presence of the elephant as I was. To them it was obviously commonplace, which in itself seemed strange to me. There were no Police around, and nobody seemed to be in any way put out by the fact that there was an elephant standing at the side of the road. One might have even expected a gathering of curious children, but no. It would seem that I was the only person who found the whole sight in any way remarkable.

The following day at work I just happened to mention it to a few people, in as casual a manner as one might possible be able to when actually rather flabberghasted by the whole affair. And it seems that many of them had heard about the man with the elephant, and a few even seen him before. So it would seem that actually I am the odd one out here, and it really is quite commonplace to see an elephant on the streets of Dhaka. However, it seems that the elephant is quite unique, and furthermore, that the elephant in question was previously a circus animal and is quite tame. The elephant is apparently still a working animal, in that the bearded man makes his money using the huge animal to perform quiet a simple but lucrative task. He rides the elephant out into the road, thereby stopping the traffic and charges what is termed by the locals as "Elephant Tax" for him to move the animal back out of the way and let the traffic move once more! Now I really am flabberghasted!

A New Big City

Dhaka is a huge city. Well, it's pretty huge by my standards. Most of the cities that I've lived in, worked in, or just had the opportunity to visit through my life so far have been kind of small cities. Even the fantastic Lisboa, which I lived so close to for three years, is tiny in comparison to Dhaka. Wiki currently quotes the population of Lisbon at about 550 thousand people; a mere drop in the ocean compared to the 15 million people living currently in Dhaka. And having all those people living all together in one big city means that you really do feel the enormity of it all.

Of course with so many people needing to get to work, or school, to the shops or just running the odd errand, there needs to be a strong transport infrastructure to get all those people moving. You may well have seen the pictures of trains and buses that are so full that people are sitting on the roof, but until you've actually witnessed it for real, in the moment, it is difficult to believe that it actually happens. The buses are old, beaten up and scarred, wounded from a thousand scrapes, patched over and over with recycled sheet metal from other things. The lights are gone, and the holes where they were patched over with more sheet metal. In some, the windows have long disappeared, never to be replaced. I'm told that travelling on a bus here is quite an experience; one that personally, I'm not in such a hurry to try out!

Further down the Wiki page, Dhaka is described as "The Rickshaw Capital of the World" with 400 thousand rickshaws working the streets of Dhaka every day. They are everywhere, on every road, street and back alley. Some of them are fantastically decorated, most are obviously well used, and all are driven by very lean, hard working men. And these men are fearless. Or possibly mad. They drive these rickety rickshaws around the city, ferrying people from A to B, fearlessly dodging their way between the cars, trucks and buses, trying to make a living. Of course my kids absolutely love traveling by rickshaw. I'm sure that the novelty will wear off sooner or later?

Rickshaws and buses aren't the only way to travel in Dhaka though. You could always take a CNG (which stands for Compressed Natural Gas) to get you to your chosen destination. These are basically a cross between a Rickshaw and a Reliant Robin, having a small motor and (so I'm led to believe) scary manual brakes! Again this really isn't something that I'm in a hurry to try. Being trapped inside one of those green cages while darting between the other traffic just simply doesn't appeal!

With 15 million people to transport around the city it is inevitable that the traffic is often slow, stationary and even gridlocked in "rush" hour. Junctions of course are the worst (and easiest) areas to get caught in traffic, where cars, buses, rickshaws and CNG's run nose to tail with barely enough room between for pedestrians to cross the roads. Horns sound in a chorus, with little result other than to make a noise, and yet somehow, the traffic keeps moving through, creeping, weaving, dodging in and out until the junction is passed.

Of course, I'm told by many that the traffic right now is easy and generally not too bad. "Wait until Eid," they say, "when everyone is out celebrating, visiting family or just trying to get in or out of Dhaka. That's when it's really bad." The next Eid (festival) coming up is Eid al-Adha, which this year falls on October 4th in the Gregorian calendar, so not long to wait to find out!