Bangladesh certainly has a different flavor from India and the landscape is wet and flat, a contrast from the dry rocky dessert of Rajasthan. Today I went to a village to help build a Habitat for Humanity house. In light rain, we dug a hole in the earth, creating a rainwater reservoir and moved the mud to fill the foundation of a floor. I explored the village and peeked in on some homes and outdoor kitchens. The crops here are rice and jute. To grow vegetables, the land needs to be drier, so terraces are built up for tomato plants and cauliflower. Eggplants, squash and pumpkins are grown upward, their vines entwined in a horizontal bamboo rack about 4 feet above the ground; the vegetables hang down below for easy harvest. The roads are high and narrow while the paddy fields are very low, at different terrace heights so the crops are at varying stages creating a patchwork of silver and green. Some are bright yellow-green fields, some have rice plants sticking up out of the water like needles in perfect rows, some are almost all water, muddy but reflecting the sky and trees in the mirror of the still water.
An outdoor kitchen in a village just outside Dhaka. Mud is molded up to create a space for a pot to sit over a fire.
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