Travel to Bangladesh: Dhaka

Dhaka (formerly Dacca) is a city of over 12,000,000, and these pictures catch only a bit of the waterfront and Ahsan Manzil as it was about 1990.

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A brighter picture would be false. The air was thick when this picture was taken from Sadarghat Road, formerly Buckland Bund. The ferries are setting out into the Burhi Ganga, the distributary of the Ganges-Brahmaputra that flows by Dhaka.

Upstream a bit, on a somewhat better day.

Along the same waterfront: the Ahsan Manzil was built in 1872 by a Kashmiri merchant named Abdul Ghani, who named it for his son Ahsanullah. In 1875, Abdul Ghani was given the title Nawab of Dacca--hereditary after 1875--because of his loyalty to the British in 1857.  It's been cleaned up since these pictures were taken, but it was better like this, a ghost emerging through the haze.

Like the phrase "basket case," the label "squatter" can be heartless. The  hundreds of people who were living in or around the old building were subsequently evicted.

An old lamp-post out front.

The main entrance.

Watch the stairs.

Living quarters.

Up on the roof: more homes.

Happy to have their picture taken, and a handsome picture it was. Where did this family go after the mansion was cleaned up?