Sonargaon and the Goaldi Mosque

The first adventure yesterday was the monsoon- it really rained for the first time, and did so all day while we were wandering around outside. Umbrellas are definitely in order! I took a few videos of the street flooding outside our building. During a real monsoon the water gets up to three feet.
It took us two hours to drive through and then out of Dhaka to Sonargaon. This was the first time I’d been out of the city, and I was excited to see the countryside. As you drive out of Dhaka the landscape gradually becomes greener and greener, until you’re surrounded by rice paddies, fields, forests, and ponds. We crossed over one large river with boats on it. Atif said that the water level would rise a lot by the end of the rains.
Sonargaon is the remains of an old zamindar house that has been converted into the national folk art museum. Our guide took us on a tour of the exhibits, which included a lot of wooden carvings, pottery, and tools. I really want to buy some carvings to take home with me, if I can find some for a good price. After we toured the museum we explored the grounds, where there are stores selling saris and materials for salwar kameez. One of them was selling saris for 700 taka, and I bought one of them; it’s dark green with a gold pattern in it. I also found pretty material for a kameez.
We got back on the bus and drove to Banam City, which is an area with a lot of ruins from colonial-era houses. We parked and had lunch. Since it was raining really hard, nobody wanted to get out of the bus and look at the ruins; we took a few pictures as we drove by on the way to the Goaldi Mosque. The Goaldi Mosque is one of the oldest extant buildings in all of Bengal; it was built in 1519. I knew it was small, but it was smaller than I expected. It would be impossible to fit more than 30-40 people into the building. Near the mosque was a banana orchard and rice paddies. Since it was raining, we were unable to go to our other destination, which is where they make saris. We got back in the bus and drove back into Dhaka. I was exhausted and rested the rest of the day.