Startled

The city of Chittagong in southern Bangladesh is home to a thriving port. The busiest trade in the port area is shipbreaking, an horrific practice whereby gigantic ships are taken apart bit by bit to be sold as scrap metal. The horrific part is that this is done by the hands of men, not machines. Men who are paid peanuts and who are not given personal safety equipment. Many of the beggars on the streets of Chittagong who are missing limbs formerly worked in the shipbreaking yards.

While this isn't a particularly fantastic photo of the animal, it does give a bit of scale to how big some of the ships are that come into the yards. It's a noisy business, and as this dog made his way along the beach, he was startled numerous times by the sounds of banging metal.

Flat Out

It can get quite hot in Bangladesh. I lived in Chittagong, located in the south east of Bangladesh for a year. My housemate and I went with a friend on a boat trip down to Rangamati, part of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, which has suffered from sporadic fighting in recent history, along with a rat plague every fifty years or so. We didn't actually get as far as Rangamati, as special permits are required to enter the area, and the border police stopped the boat.

It was February at the time of this photograph, which was the end of winter. I remember it being quite warm in the middle of the day, and our friend jumping in the river (complete with his BYO life jacket) for a swim, but that it cooled down dramatically in the afternoon and that I wrapped my thin orna (a scarf) around me in a futile attempt to block out the breeze.

This dog must have spent the whole day running up and down the river bank, enjoying the sunshine, which as we all can imagine would get pretty tiring. So what better place to have a nap, than a dug out little spot in the mud in the shade, complete with headrest.