Dhaka to Khulna

Found myself awake at 5AM and rather than face the traffic nightmare in visiting the airport, I headed out at 6AM and made it in 25 minutes (vs the 1:45 trip from the airport to the hotel).  Airport security is pretty lax at DAC, at least for domestic flights.  Today I flew an AR-72 to Jessore, only a 30 minute trip by air, but about a 10 hour bus ride.  Upon arrival at Jessore, was placed on an airline-run mini-bus that took my group the further 90 minutes to Khulna.

This was a pleasant drive through rural Bangladesh and at one point we were only 20 miles from the Indian border.  Lots of rice paddies and farmers tending their crops.  A nice change from Dhaka, though for some reason there were also a lot of brick and cement factories in between the farms.  Khulna is a rather non-descript city of 1.5 million people, the third largest city in Bangladesh.  At one point it had a thriving port and one could take a ferry steamer from Dhaka to Khulna.

Bangla Logging Truck

 Apparently the river isn't deep enough anymore for this sort of travel.  Wound up checking in at the excellent City Inn...make that kind of excellent since they're doing a lot of new construction and what might have been a quiet night in a room at the back has now become a noisy night in a room up front by the road.  The choice was jackhammers or horns honking.  Looks like my trip to the Sundarbans might be moved up to tomorrow, so this may be the last post for a few days as there isn't any internet down there.

NOTES FOR TRAVELERS:
Airfare from Dhaka to Jessore is $45, plus an additional $2.50 for the bus to Khulna.  Unless you plan to visit Bagerhat and/or the Sundarbans, there's really not much to recommend in Khulna.  The City Inn is far and away the nicest place in town and a single with a/c and breakfast costs around $30 including all taxes.  Hopefully if you stay there, the construction work will be finished.