​A Picnic here is quite different than anything you might expect.  Our one involved 10 hours on a bus and about 5 hours of walking!  All the school staff gathered down the road for a 6.10 departure.  Apparently the hold up was the restaurant that hadn't finished packing our breakfast and morning snack so we went to the restaurant and waited outside it to wait.  About half an hour later we were making our way out of Chandpur at full speed down the centre of the road, weaving our way along until we neared the numerous small towns where we had to slow down to get between the rickshaws and CNGs.  Breakfast was served about half an hour later and consisted of a roti in a paper bag and some liquid curry in a small plastic bag.  Devouring it one handed was quite a challenge for me but I managed remarkably well.  Morning snack was a sandwich that contained something tasty!  Three hours later we arrived at our first destination - a lake best viewed by climbing a track up a hillside. A first for many of the staff who had never before encountered a hill.  Actually it was very difficult to view the lake from up the hill because of the foliage! As you will see from the photos.
                                                           BANGLADESH                                     WEEK 1                  PICNIC









































































































































































































































































         This young lad amused me - no hands required!                       Most goats I have seen wander free.                     I tried to photograph this lady sitting but she wanted to                                                                                                                                                                                                           stand for her photo.






























Next stop was a botanical garden /eco village - it is still a mystery to me why it was named as such.  This involved a bigger walk up a hill to a destination no-one had an idea of what this was. After what seemed like ages we asked a returning group - it seemed we still had a couple of kilometers to ascend to a waterfall.  At this point we succumbed to paying a motorized vehicle to take us the remainder of the way - only to discover you then had to descend 560 concrete steps to view the waterfall. Quite a few of us opted to stay put and wait for others to return from what turned out to be a trickle of a waterfall as it was not yet the rainy season!  While waiting I was in hot demand for selfies again - even with young children popped on my lap for the occasion.















































After this I was more than ready for the picnic lunch - a restaurant meal which was awesome.   The restroom was quite interesting to get into though​ as ones posterior is not to be facing Mecca I am told.  I am learning lots of important and interesting information.   
Didn't like this stretch of road as there were 3 new bridges being build and some very uneven narrow areas built up with earth held up by logs was not pleasant to go over - even worse in the dark coming home.





































 Late lunch over and thinking  it time to head back home, we find that we are going further south down to Chittagong to see the sea.  Once there I was amazed to see large ships that had been driven up as close as possible to the shore to be demolished.  Propellors fully exposed but could not figure out how they stayed upright.                                                                                                                                                                     






























                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Crows are the most common birds you see.