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Featured Categories : Travel & Holiday : Countries & Regions : Asia : Bangladesh
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The Brahmaputra is one of Asia's longest rivers, and tracing its course from Tibet to Bangladesh is perhaps "the last great Asian adventure". Undeterred, Mark Shand set out to do just that, and River Dog tells of his journey accompanied by Indian friends and a dog called Bhaiti.Shand's previous book, Travels on My Elephant, told of travelling in India by elephant; after this experience, he writes, he could not imagine travelling without an animal. Enter Bhaiti--the true hero of River Dog--whose experiences sniffing after bitches and saving his master from death by snakebite provide Shand's wit with plenty of opportunities to make its mark. As they progress, a touching bond develops between Shand and Bhaiti, with the author laughing along with his dog at his own stumbling progress--a 48-year-old not averse to sharing in the odd joint or opium bong, the false stereotype of the intrepid explorer is cleverly undone by Shand through his candour and the self-deprecating title of his book.
Shand certainly comes across as an old travelling hand. As he ventures through India his alcohol consumption increases daily, but fortunately by now Shand and company are travelling by boat and not on foot. Moving into Bangladesh, Shand becomes more observant; this is a new country to him, which gives his writing a freshness that is absent earlier in the book, and the narrative soon culminates with the team's arrival at the Bay of Bengal. Shand's excitement at reaching the sea is real enough, but he is subsequently prevented from completing the journey in Tibet by the Chinese authorities; although this undermines the "epic" nature of the journey, River Dog remains an entertaining account of a river voyage made by an unlikely team of one man and his dog.--Toby Green
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Three statistics leap from the page of Adrian and Bridget Plass's Colours of Survival: the world spends $780 billion a year on the military--just $8 billion would help its people to feed themselves and $9 Billion would provide clean drinking water. Shocking, isn't it? Of course, the Plass's book is more than an exercise in stark statistics. Written to raise funds for the Christian international development and humanitarian agency World Vision, it is a funny, frank and sympathetic account of their trip to Bangladesh to visit 11-year-old Shahnaj, the little girl from the Dhaka slums they have sponsored through the charity for the last five years. The Plasses take it in turn to write and poignantly depict the appalling pollution and poverty they encounter as they tour World Vision's many projects in Bangladesh's sprawling cities and villages. An all--female savings club in Tuital, a day centre for street girls in Dhaka and the training of traditional birth attendants in Chittagong are amongst its success stories. Bridget movingly describes meeting Shahnaj for the first time. All her reserve and Western awkwardness is expelled when Shahnaj hands her a rose then takes her by the hand to lead her back to the six-foot-square shanty dwelling she shares with her brother, sisters and parents. Thanks to constant flooding, Bangladesh may well be the fifth poorest country in the world, yet the people Adrian and Bridget Plass encounter are welcoming, generous and seem genuinely to be hope filled, especially Shahnaj and her family. --Amanda Cameron
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