The title of this post is an honest to god comment in a conversation I was having on our day trip to Bangladesh's largest waterfalls, a series of nine gorgeous falls in the middle of honest-to-god jungle about an hour and a half north of Chittagong (my current city). For those that haven't spent a ton of time living overseas, especially for those who haven't traveled to developing countries that generally host a whole slew of crazy diseases and ailments, packing a serious amount of meds is standard practice. Any embarrassment about bodily functions goes out the window when everyone is stuck in the same boat of living in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and accidentally drinking water in the shower can land you in some serious hurt for a few days. So it was a pretty entertaining conversation among the fellows as we compared what meds we brought excess of.
We arrived at the waterfalls around 11:00 AM charged and ready to go. We were told that you could swim in gorgeous pools under each waterfall and in anticipation, my flat-mates and I all wore bathing suits under our hiking clothes. We knew that the conservative nature of the country meant that we wouldn't get to bare our bikinis but it's still more comfortable to be in a wet swimsuit than wet underwear.
The van we hired for the day dropped us at a bridge at the mouth of a small village. We were surrounded by rice patties, goats, chickens, cows, and other crops in small, segmented plots of land. Here and there small houses popped up out of the surrounding, often with walls and ceilings of that wavy steel often used on construction projects in developing countries with frequent and heavy rains. Other houses had more traditional thatch roofs and mud walls. The parade of 12 or so mostly white women fellows made for an interesting parade as we wound our way through small village paths towards the base of big hills/small mountains (where is the cut-off for that anyways?).
The intrepid band.
Here is one of the smaller village homes.
The stupid "bridge" (photo courtesy of Britt).
Now anyone who knows me well knows I'm a cautious individual. That's why the bridge seen in the picture above was such a horror to come across for me. That's about five pieces of bamboo tied together with hemp rope and tossed across a rather large stream gully between two sides of the village. No, there was no other way around. The whole contraption bounced dangerously as you walked across it, enough to make me reconsider all my late night snacking and the many benefits of losing just a couple more pounds. We should have taken the bridge as an indication of what was to come.
As we started hiking the trail got steadily steeper and muddier, narrowing down to barely passable strips of mud bordering rocky stream beds on one side and solid greenery on the other. There was pretty much nowhere else to go. After what seemed like a fairly exhausting hike (which was in reality maybe 40 minutes) we arrived at the base of the first waterfall.
This is the last picture I took on the hike, because at this point the rest of my time was spent swimming in waterfall pools and clambering barefoot up vertical mudbanks wrestling vines for leverage. No, I'm not being dramatic, that's exactly what happened. We took a half-hour break swimming around in this waterfall pool and relaxing under the waterfall itself before it was time to continue up to the top of the falls. This waterfall was just the first, after all, in a series of nine. I wish I could have taken photos of the "path" itself but I put my camera away inside a ziplock bag in the carrying case, because we slipped and slid and clambered our way up the rest of the hike.
You can ask anyone in my immediate family and they would tell you that I've done my fair share of hard hikes. I've spent a week carrying everything I needed in the Olympics, spent regular weekends bumming around the Appalachian trail as a kid, and I even climbed one of the volcanoes in Rwanda's famous Virunga National Park in fashion boots (because while I can climb, I can't plan). But this hike was especially fun because at no point did we hike or walk anywhere. It was straight up vertical climbing, at certain points scaling the waterfalls themselves because they were easier to climb up than trying to forge a trail around the slippery sodden banks.
Several of us ditched our shoes on the way up, figuring it was easier to climb barefoot where at least we could sense the footholds and slippery bits. It helped, but certainly not a lot. There were moments where I was physically hoisted over high banks because I wasn't tall enough to get a decent foothold and my grip was starting to slip.
Finally, exhausted, we made it to the top. We couldn't have made it without the help of a group of three Bangladeshi guys who decided to tail along and give us a boost. They were out from the city to hike the waterfalls for the day too, and had planned on giving up after the first couple waterfalls when they saw us continuing on and realized they couldn't let a load of white girls show them up in their home country. That was helpful until we finally hit the top pool where they decided to float around and make creepy comments to us, all while apparently jabbering in Bangla about lewd topics. Still, we probably wouldn't have made it without them so we put up with some of weird behavior.
The view from the top was absolutely worth the trouble though. We were nestled in the middle of the jungle in the middle of nowhere. The way the waterfalls cascaded gave the effect of nature's own infinity pools so that once in the water it was impossible to see the edge. The pools didn't go right up to the edge, so there was no danger of swimming off, but it was still absolutely amazing. If you laid back and looked out you could imagine that you were the only person left in the world.
Around this relaxing moment, my flatmate Minoli made an alarming discovery. Somehow during the hike, a leech had decided to attach itself to the middle of her back where it was having a delicious feast of fresh Sri Lanken. We took the very medical practice of poking it with a stick until it fell off and then using a dirty hiking knife to scrape the residual teeth left inside the perfectly round nickel-sized wound. This leech bite continued to bleed and ooze for the next 48 hours, with yours truly serving as regular bandage service until the nurse at AUW deemed the bite fine and nagged us about not poking at leeches because it makes them spew a kind of poison that keeps wounds open and leads to infection. Fun stuff, right? We still joke about how Minoli, a born and bred Sri Lanken, has never been bitten by a leech until she came to Bangladesh, and then one week later... they must love the taste of South Asians!
I have to wrap this up and get to work but we mostly slid down the waterfalls to head back to the van much later. When I say slid, I mean I was on my ass using my feet to brace me as I slid down nearly-verticle mud banks on my way back down to level ground. I survived no problem but those pants have a very cute little hole right in the left cheek now.
We trudged back through the village where we made an even greater spectacle of ourselves before piling into the van and heading back to Chittagong for some well-deserved rest.
Village home
My exhausted and un-made up face with a local girl who did the ENTIRE hike with us in a dress and flip flops, and never needed a lick of help from anyone, making us all feel terribly incompetent.
Gathering to watch the foreigners trying to cross the bamboo bridge again. Immediately after this photo was taken, Sam (our only male fellow) was charged by an angry cow.
Walking along the railroad tracks back to the van.
A final view of the scenery.
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