17-Feb-2004 -- I had been to Bangladesh once before with big plans to do a confluence there, as all the easy ones in Australia had been taken. Unfortunately I had my GPS stolen and hadn't had a chance to get a new one, so I'd missed my opportunity.

Fortunately I returned to Bangladesh equipped with a new GPS and a renewed determination to actually get to a confluence.

We hired a taxi for the day for the princely sum of 1500 Taka (£15). The taxi driver was a little hesitant at first as we couldn't tell him where we actually wanted to go. Further consultation with our map told us that the town of Satkuria seemed to be closest.

We drove as far as we could in the taxi. The finally few kilometers were mostly guess work as we didn't have a map showing the small local roads in the area, however we managed to make it to about 3Km away from the confluenece before deciding to abandon the taxi and set out on foot. The taxi driver looked quite bemused when we told him that we would return "later", however he agreed to wait for us. The confluence is located in a fairly typical Bangladeshi agricultural area, with a large number of rice fields to traverse. It is actually quite difficult to walk on the small walls that run between each rice paddy, however we managed to keep ourselves reasonably dry.

There were quite a few workers in the fields and the sight of 2 tall white men wandering through their fields created quite a stir, however everyone was quite friendly. We tried to ask for advice on the best path to take, however everyone wanted to know where we weregoing, and they seemed to have trouble understanding that we didn't know where we were going, just walking in a certain direction.

Eventually we made it to the site of the confluence itself. It is located in a field quite close to a farmers house. We asked the permission of the farmer Md Waz Uddin, who was quite accommodating in allowing us to use his field. I'm not sure he quite understood why we wanted to stand in his field and take photographs, however he was quite happy to let us.

Afterwards Mr Uddin invited us back to his house for a feed of Mangoes and a sweet rice dish, which tasted fantastic.

We then headed back to our taxi via a much more direct route and back to the smoggy air of Dhaka. All in all a fantastic first confluence and a great way to meet some of the locals.