Remembering Bangladesh

It’s the school’s Spring Break for Jayden. He has a whopping 3 weeks of holidays this year! 2 weeks of Spring Break, followed by the Eid Al Fitr holidays. We’re not going anywhere this year, unfortunately, ahem… Gotta save some money for the summer holidays. What to do?


Jatiyo Sriti Soudho (National Martyr’s Memorial), Bangladesh

This time of the year, last year, we were in our India home. At the same time a tragic incident happened in neighbouring Bangladesh. One of Anu’s nephews in Bangladesh whom we just got to know the year before, met with an accident and sadly passed away. We hope his family has healed. God, continue to make the family strong, to strive on as before, to continue to have hope in your kindness and your strength.

To all the Christians out there, have a blessed Good Friday and Easter!


Anu’s rediscovered family in Bangladesh, Hob Nob Café, Banani, Dhaka, Jul 2022 - Hriday, may God bless his soul, is the tall chap in blue on the left. His mother and sister are standing in front of him. Swapan, one of Anu’s long-lost cousins is on the extreme right. Beside him, is his daughter. Swapan’s wife is in the middle standing behind Anu’s aunt. Swapan’s young son is the boy on the extreme left of the photo




More photos of the girls!


And here’re the boys! (No, the aunt doesn’t count)


Jackfruit, the national fruit of Bangladesh! The family brought a whole jackfruit, plus more, for us, to bring away. We politely declined, but we had a jackfruit feast in Dhaka!


Now, how else can you end a meal, if not with paan?! Thank God the Bangladeshis are just as hooked on paan as the people from North-East India (Anu included)

Ending the post with a few random pictures of our short 1 day stay in Bangladesh (thanks to the likes of Al Jazeera Airways and SalamAir – see my post, The Long Way Home Part 1).


The swimming pool of our Dhaka hotel, the Raintree Dhaka






And finally, more of Bangladesh’s National Martyr’s Memorial

Gateway to Central Asia

Ramadan Kareem! It’s Ramadan, the fasting month!

The good thing about Ramadan is that we have shorter working hours (yippee), less traffic jams and less work pressure generally, as the clients would be typically more relaxed and accommodating. (If things could stay like that for the whole year, everyone would live a longer life…)

The bad thing is that due to the reduced working hours, I find it really hard to come up with enough time to do the personal stuff. Writing this blog, for example.

So, it’ll have to be holiday photos for the time being! I have something up my sleeve this year, just for the Islamic Holy month… From the land of the madrassas! Here goes!


The Registan, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

The Registan is the heart the city of Samarkand (or Samarqand), one of the oldest cities in Central Asia and was the heart of the Timurid Empire. Samarkand, was an important city on the ancient Silk Road.


Samarkand - World Cultural Tourism Capital. Sez who? Well, that’s what the large, fat sign beside the Registan says! (above)


The Registan is flanked by 3 madrasahs (schools in the Islamic world – the plural for madrasa in Arabic should actually be madaris, but that would only confuse the heck out of all the English readers out there) – the one in the middle, facing the square’s entrance is the Tilya-Kori Madrasah. It is the one with the blue domed mosque. The madrasah to the right (when entering the square) is the Sherdoh Madrasah. It is the one with two tigers above the entrance arch. The madrasah on the left, is the Ulugbek Madrasah, which the oldest of the three.


Us and the Tilya-Kori Madrasah


Justin and mommy at the Tilya-Kori Madrasah’s entrance arch. Yes, Justin was with us on this trip. His first foreign trip with family, after he started schooling in Singapore




The interiors of the beautiful Tilya-Kori Mosque


The Sherdoh Madrasah. Notice the tiger and sun emblems on the top?


The lattice-screened central opening to the Ulugbek Madrasah. All the 3 madrasahs here have this feature


In the courtyard of the Ulugbek Madrasah. It was winter (Dec 2023), that’s why all the trees were barren


Uzbek craftsman trading their wares, Ulugbek Madrasah, Registan, Samarkand


Coffee break in freezing Samarkand – Ulugbek Madrasah


The gardens surrounding the Registan


The Tilya-Kori Mosque from behind

That’s all folks. Express photo blog done!

The Rose Gardens of Green Mountain

Happy Women’s Day! Another day dedicated to women. (OK, Valentine’s is for both sexes, but …from observation, I think it mostly works one way, ahem. When will men ever get a day of their own?)

Here’s a flower farm trip that was really nice, and one which we loved! So much so, that we went back for a second round, within 4 months! Welcome to Jebel Akhdar (or literally Green Mountain in Arabic) of Oman! Here goes, a picture post.


Jebel Akhdar is a mountainous plateau in northern Oman, about umm… 6 hours drive from our home in Dubai. One thing to note is that you have to have a 4WD car to drive up to Jebel Akhdar. (Why? Just because they say so. Nah, I think it’s for safety when descending the steep roads). There’s a police checkpoint at the foot of Jebel Akhdar where they check your car for 4-wheel-drive capabilities. If your car doesn’t have 4WD, hard luck! You’d have to park at the foot of the hill, and take a cab up, or hire a 4WD car. Our trusty ol’ Hyundai Tucson has All-Wheel-Drive (AWD) and we’re through! Here we come, mountains! We love mountains, by the way!


This my friend, is Jebel Akhdar in Dec 2022. The farms, which are on terraces cut into the steep hillside, go all the way down almost to the wadi below.


There’re 3 hillside villages which people trek through, although you could trek all the way down and even further. The villages are Al Aqur (left, nearest), Al Ain (right) and Al Shuraijah (middle, furthest)


The valley showing a village further below, Al Qusha. The building on the top right, near the ledge is said to belong to a prince of Qatar


Al Sharaf Old House, Al Aqur village. This is an old house which is opened for tourists. There’s a small fee if I remember correctly, but you’ll learn about how people make rose water, the main industry in this area, visit all the rooms in the house and try some local coffee. But December isn’t the rose season… So there’re no roses to see, or process. And that last comment, my wife remembered quite clearly, which is why we visited Jebel Akhdar a second time, hehe


We started our trek from Al Aqur village which is the nearest village to the main town in Jebel Akhdar where the hotels are. Fancy some qahwah? A coffee break at Al Sharaf Old House, Al Aqur Village, Jebel Akhdar


The trails are prominently marked with a paint work of red, white and yellow. If you see that marking, you’re on the right track. Approaching Al Ain village, where the bigger farms are! Yippee!


Somewhere after Al Ain village. There’s a trail that goes from Al Ain to Al Shuraijah, but I think this one goes down to Al Qusha below. I’m not sure, as this was the extent that we went before turning back to our car in Al Aqur. (Our phones ran out of batteries incidentally. What’s the use of having all the fun and not taking photos?) The farms are a little yellow as you can see as it wasn’t flower season (and because the photos were taken on my old Samsung 7 phone which still contained …a teeny little bit of battery. Anu’s was completely drained…)


Know why we went back in April now? …Flower season! Jebel Akhdar in April 2023, much greener as you can see!




Us in Jebel Akhdar, April 2023


It’s a long way to fall…


Honey, be careful, will ya?


Enjoying the sunset in Jebel Akhdar. See ya!

Our Local Train Adventure!

Talking about flower gardens, not all flower farm trips turn out good. This post is one such case. Here goes!


Khirai Railway Station, West Bengal, India

How It Started…

“Honey, we have to visit our banks in India. We have to reactivate our accounts. Can’t bloody transfer or touch our money!”

(They’re dormant because the banks need us to update the KYC documents, and it ain’t our fault. That’s because when we visited Kolkata a year before i.e. in Mar 2022 to do our banking stuff (yes, that trip’s ONLY for the banking stuff), which was our first such visit after the long pandemic lockdown, the bank workers decided to hold a 2-day nation-wide strike. Why they decided to time it to the exact day that we visited, beats me. Maybe, they have a bone to grind with us, for ignoring them for the last errr… 3 years. (Hey, it’s the pandemic, OK?) We didn’t wanna hang out in Kolkata for an extra 3 days, staying in a hotel, with nothing to do. (We’ve been to Kolkata countless times, and have seen just about everything there is to see). So, we left and went home to Assam. Bye HSBC, bye SCB. See you when we see you!)

“OK darling. Are there any interesting places we could stopover on our way home? Like this place (shows a photo of a hill station in Karnataka).”

“We could. Let’s see. Ooh, that Karnataka hotel is fully booked. What about Cochin, Kerala? It has more or less the same stuff, and has both banks that we need to visit, and you’ve never been there. Then, we could fly to Silchar via Kolkata or Guwahati.”

“How much are the flight tickets? … … Whoa! That’s not cheap. Besides, Kerala is hot and humid. Aren’t there any places with nice, cool hills like Kullu Manali?”

“Ummm, let me see. That’s even more expensive, and we can’t do our banking stuff. Kerala has some nice waterfalls! And hills. And we could stay in the backwaters in a houseboat. Watch some Kathakali, huh? What say you?”

“Ummm…” (looks at some pictures, but not convinced, primarily because of the increased costs). “Hey, there’re some flower farms near Kolkata. Do you think they’re in season?”

Google shows only photos and info from the winter season. There’s nothing much about how it is in late March.

The Trip…

“OK, we’re here (Kolkata). It’s Sunday. Banks only open tomorrow. What do we do today?”

“Darling, shall we go to the flower farm???”

“OK honey. But you do the bargaining for the car, OK?”

And so, we got an OK deal with the first car that came along.

“Madam, good car, good AC.”


Good car, good AC leaving Kolkata. Namaskar Madam Mamta Bannerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal

Good car, good AC, started heating up even before we got out of the city-proper.

“Hey, where’s the AC?”

“No problem, madam.” (No problem for him, but big, sweaty problem for us, because there was no more AC! What more about ‘good’ AC?!)

After some time, the driver stops. Opens his bonnet and puts some water into who-knows-where. And then, he drove on.

“Are you sure you can make it? If not, just stop and we’ll get another car.”

“No problem, madam.” (My foot). And he keeps calling someone on the phone (yeah, while driving, no police around) to discuss about how bad the car is, I think…

He stopped a couple of times and repeated his water-filling rituals.

Finally, … “Madam, small problem, madam. Car need repair!”

FUCK! I knew this was coming. Luckily, we were in some sort of a town and we saw a car workshop, so our good car with good AC, pulled into the workshop. We were also lucky, because not too far away, we noticed something that looked like a restaurant. Lo and behold, it was indeed a restaurant, a dusty one which only had us as customers. (I think it was way past their lunch time by then). Halfway thru our lunch, the driver came and declared that his good car with good AC will not be able to go further, but could take us back to Kolkata. We said he could go fly kites. And paid him a fair share (which, of course, he disagreed), but he brought us out to the middle of nowhere, I mean somewhere, but nowhere that we wanted to be in, and it was only halfway to the flower farm location. Plus, earlier, the missus had been having a chat with the restaurant proprietor, asking for ways to get another car, and learnt that there was a railway station in town and that the easiest way to get to the flower farm, or back to Kolkata was by train!

The Train Trip to Khirai…

And so, after our late lunch, we took an auto-rickshaw to the Bagnan Railway Station, and bought tickets to Khirai Station, where the flower farms are. The tickets are a fraction of the cost of a car. It’s like riding on a public bus. Heck, that train rides to Khirai, and back to Kolkata eventually, for the 3 of us (Justin was in Singapore, lucky him), was cheaper than the public bus fares in Dubai City! I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.


Bagnan Railway Station – See those people in fancy dresses? That’s what everyone else in the station think we’re in


The train’s here! One small tip – the only thing to watch out for here, are the Hijras, the eunuchs of Indian trains. (For the Malaysians who don’t know what these are, they’re the pondan’s and akua’s). They’ll hop on the trains, harass people for some tips and leave. You could oblige, or just pretend to be deep in dreamland, how ever much they goad you… Good luck!


Hey, it started to rain… the countryside near Khirai, I don’t see no flowers?!?


Khirai Station – We’ve arrived, but let’s go get our return tickets first. We dunno what time the train to Kolkata’s coming. Huh? In 20 minutes’ time? (It’s either this, or the next train in 2 hours’ time. Shucks, better not risk it. It’s getting late, don’t wanna wait here in the dark).


Is this Khirai? It’s not even a village… A few shanty huts with a dirt track and acres and acres of farms


Finally, we see the flowers. Hi Khirai! Bye Khirai! We gotta go, no time!


Our train’s here! In our 20 to 30 minutes in Khirai, we’ve managed to cross the pedestrian bridges umm… 4 times? 6 times? Getting to the platform, then going back to look for toilets, getting to the platform again, then went looking for my sunglasses which I dropped, near the toilet (we found them, ahem), and rushing back to the platform, just in time for the train to come. Whew, what an adventure!