What a long, strange trip it’s been!  I sit here in my final internet cafe on the final day of my trip through the Indian subcontinent, typing away at a stubborn keyboard that may just make my fingers sore depending how long I spend tip-tip-tipping away at it and trying to reflect back on the time here in the past 5 weeks since I arrived.  I can’t say there have been any overwhelming experiences, no encounters with God, Shiva, Ram, or even Vishnu.  It’s been a journey though, and one that has left me utterly exhausted and more ready than ever to return to the embracing, well-meaning Communist-run cocoon that is China.  At least there the food rarely conspires against me in such a proactive fashion.

Like I mentioned before,  I remain camera-less.  Thus my time since leaving Dhaka is similarly undocumented.  I arrived early in Rajshahi and wandered the streets until I gave in to the hotel folks who all assured me that nothing but their most expensive room was still available.  Lovely of them.  This was the beginning of a period of 48 hours without seeing anyone else who was neither Bangladeshi or Indian.  I boarded a local bus down the highway to Puthia, the village that is host to a number of older Hindu temples in the range of several hundred years.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, having been told via Lonely Planet’s pages that the site would be flooded with tourists in another country, but then they said similarly glowing things about more disappointing sets of fallen architecture.

The guidebook also offered a word of advice concerning Mr. Bishendra, who works for the government’s archaeological section as the caretaker of the grounds, as being a helpful man and a true gentlemen.  Mr. Bishendra however contradicted these exacts words, to the point of singling them out in my text and saying that he was ‘no gentlemen’.  He was however very willing to unlock the inner parts of the local temples and show them to me, as well as explain the history behind them and some of the religious significance, though I am afraid I must confess to an insufficient knowledge of the Ramayana to truly see which episodes of Hindu lore are played out on the intricate sandstone carvings decorating the best of the ruins.

Overall it was worth the effort to get out there, and later I moved on to Jessore by train and transferred to a bus bound for the frontier with India, where I had a conversation with a local man about Allah and how he has a plan of love for us.  Though I may not see eye to eye with him on that, the gist of it is nice at least, as was his flowing beard and insistence on buying me some fruit as I was a guest in his country.  This I politely refused, a skill I have honed through my travel in the hospitable environs of Asia.  At the border, the paper I struggled so mightily to get in Dhaka was not requested, needed, or looked at.  Bureaucracy fail.

On the Indian side, I quickly made friends who would help me with anything I needed, forms, money changing, bus tickets, all of that.  This actually turned out to be useful as the border fellows doubling up the customs booth don’t know their job, and I had the pleasure of explaining why my visa was valid.  That done, and a tip to my new ‘friends’ away, I was on a bus bound for Kolkata, a mere 85kms or 3 hours distant.  Arriving in evening, I found a hotel, slept, and saw a museum the next day.  Today I go home and I look forward to hearing the harsh sounds of Mandarin all around me again.  But before that, I will spend my time in the airports.