This is the third part in a series on Bandarban called The Hills are Calling.
Check out the earlier articles:
The Silent DebotaKhum
The Hungry Thanchi
The Angry NafaKhum
The last two days had taken a toll on our bodies. We were not getting up early the following day.
We woke up at roughly 9 AM, and it was still too cold to crawl out from under our blankets. We finally got up at ten and got fresh. We warmed ourselves around a bonfire. When we had returned to the hut, we found out that the relative managed khichuri (yellow rice), aloo-bhorta (mashed potato), dim-bhaji (fried eggs), and daal (lentils) for us. We had a satisfying breakfast, completely disregarding that this could make us too heavy for our return trip to Remakri. This time it took us 2.5 hours!
We packed our bags and set down the same path we came at 11 AM. We waited at several places, and we remembered to thank the lady-shopkeeper for the body-warming drink. It helped a lot during the night. Within 1:30 PM, we were back at Remakri, where our boat had already been waiting. We got on the boat and set sail for Thanchi again. We did not stop at any detached land this time, as we had been travelling downstream. No sooner had we reached Thanchi shore than our cellphones started buzzing with a million notifications. That’s when we realized; our ethereal befuddle had just come to an end.
The trip was short, but this feeling of peace that we felt while living disconnected, away from civilization, without any technology, and with limited means is something that I’ll reminisce about for the rest of my life.
The Paharis are a simple people. Yet, they had a significant impact on how I view the world and life in general. I heard plans of a bridge to NafaKhum. This form of urbanization will cause the infiltration of modern components into the Pahari community, making NafaKhum a purely commercial area and causing the Paharis to lose their lifestyle forever. I dearly hope that never happens, and if it does, I hope I get the chance to visit them one last time before that happens.
Not everything is about ease of access; sometimes, the difficulty in accessing something makes it that much desirable. And when we are talking about someone else’s identity, the majority certainly is in no way entitled to indoctrinating anyone into their own culture. In an ideal world, the Paharis should be allowed to preserve their songs, follow their religion, and never worry about losing their land or life.
At Thanchi, Biraj cleared our papers with the BGB and the Tourism Corporation. We paid 2,200 BDT for Biraj’s services, 2,300 BDT for housing and food services, and 4,500 BDT to the boatman for his services and then had a very unsatisfying lunch. We had already talked to a Chander-gari driver after first arriving at Bandarban. He agreed to take us to AliKodom through the hilly AliKodom roads for 3,500 BDT. We went up and down again for three more hours and then arrived at a peak.
At the peak of the hills sat a police check-post. We looked around after submitting our papers. We felt like we could see the entire district of Bandarban from up there. We did what any sensible tourist would do at this point, clicked a bunch of photos. We then got back in the car. The car sped at will, and we felt the wind in our hair (and also in our chests, which is why we needed hoodies). We were stopped twice for checkups, and we had to submit documents at both places.
AliKodom was more civilized than the last location we visited.
The place has electric lines, different kinds of people, offices, and political posters everywhere. We also saw a few people wearing corporate clothes and hats. We realized that the trip was nearing its end, and that made us feel defeated. However, we still had a little more to go. No sooner had we got off from the car, a kid, who happened to be the conductor of a minibus, called on us to get on the final seats. We seemed to have grown an affinity towards last-minute seats.
We got our hopes too high when we heard it’s a mini “bus.” We cut tickets at a counter for 70 BDT each and gave the conductor our luggage. The sight of the vehicle had us shocked. It was anything but a bus. The vehicle was smaller than a jeep. There were three rows of seats, and on the edge of the first row sat the driver. Behind it all were two perpendicular seat-less rows like in a typical jeep. The first row was closed with two doors, one on the driver’s side and the other on the shotgun side. Besides the driver, this row housed four other passengers. The two rows behind had a divider in the middle. The passengers got in through the back and sat on either side. Each side of a row had two seats, meaning that no part of the vehicle, not even the wheels went without a passenger. In the back sat four more passengers. The vehicle was packed, and not a single person wore a mask. The only assurance we had was that we were surrounded by Paharis, who supposedly have stronger immunity than us.
We were bound for Chokoria, where the Cox’s Bazar bound buses supposedly stand. We were stopped twice for checkups again, and getting out of this vehicle proved to be a real struggle each time we reached a check-post. One of the check-posts took our documents. The other did a routine checkup and let us pass. We reached Chokoria at 7 PM, and we decided to rest a little before we caught another bus. We had tea and snacks. We approached the highway at 7:30 PM. Enough of the hills for now; at this time, we hear the seas calling our names.