Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, November 2019
The most interesting sights aren’t usually the ones advertised in tour guides or planned in itineraries. It is the random, impromptu, stumbled upon happenings that stand out and make the mind’s cogs turn.
Our itinerary had us hunting for tigers in southern Bangladesh. With an armed guard in tow we boarded our country boat in order to travel from the open water of the Bay of Bengal and reach the Sundarbarns mangrove forest.
“What’s that?” “It looks like he’s in a flowerpot.” “Is that a cut up buoy he is rowing?”
The others on my boat excitedly looked, pointed and wondered what was going on in the scene before them. I looked and wondered what they could see.
“What are we looking at?” I quietly asked my brother.
“Can you see the orange thing? It looks like a bloke has made a boat out of a giant bucket or something.”
I lifted my camera to my eye and scanned the horizon, thankful that I was looking for something orange; that’s a colour that jumps out at me. Eventually I found a random splodge of orange and clicked. “Bugger”. I knew straight away that I hadn’t focussed properly.
On we went into the mangroves and the heat. Most people’s minds focused on the tiger hunt. I kept thinking of what I had missed on the water. We walked and we sweated.
Finally it was time to get back on our boat and cross the water again. For me the hunt had just begun. I found a seat on the edge of the boat on the side I figured our orange, floating friend would be. I readied my camera waiting to take my shots. Would the elusive rower be seen again?
A blurry spot of orange appeared again. I lifted my camera for a better view and at the same time my brother confirmed we were approaching the Bangladeshi boatman again. I snapped and snapped. Zoomed in and out. Shot away as if a tiger was racing towards me.
Our armed guard looked a bit bored as we went on; he hadn’t needed to use his trigger finger. I was happy knowing that I had captured my quarry.
This is a simple image that doesn’t freak my eye out with too much detail to untangle. The orange jumps out at me catching even my eye immediately. The craft, its cargo and the man stoically rowing it, along with the large vessel behind him slowly melts into view.
It also tells the story of Bangladesh, at least part of the story anyway. It is a place of extreme poverty; a place where people have to improvise and get their hands dirty in order to move forward. As the large boat in the background shows though Bangladesh also has its share of wealth and modernity. It is a place of extremes.
I may not have seen or photographed a tiger but I did manage to photograph and then see a guy rowing an improvised, recycled, orange boat with dirt as his cargo in the Bay of Bengal. I bet photographs of that are rarer than tiger shots.