Day 1 - Wow!

Here come some pics of the first two days of adventure. The very first one as you can see its us leaving the civilized western world from Malpensa International Airport.

After an almost 6-hour flight we got to Abu Dhabi where a crazy taxi driver, speeding 200 km/h on Abu Dhabi smooth highways, took us to what he wanted us to believe to be the city center, which in reality was just a crapy shopping mall where all the shops were already shut down.

So we met this British gentleman and we asked him if it was possible to share a taxi to go to the real center which is where his hotel was located. So we did, and very kindly he also paid for the ride.

We ended up going to Pizza Hut and had a stuffed hawaiian pizza with cokes and a caesar salad.

In a hurry, we caught another taxi and went back to the Airport where our second Etihad Airways Airbus A330 was waiting for us.

We landed in Dhaka after 4 and a half hours and one thing that really caught our attention was the kind of luggage with which all the Bangladeshi fellow passengers were travelling. We attach a picture!

Shock number one: just outside the airport. There are people all over. The police won't let them in. They're stuck outside, waiting for someone to arrive. We feel like mice in a cage with all the people shouting and pushing on the fences. Eventually a guy comes up and ask for our names. He's from the hotel and in a minute he'll have us picked up by their minivan.

This is Abu Dhabi newest mosque. Guess how many people can fit in there!? 1000? Not even close. 5000? more more more... 20.000? Nein! more!

As many as 35.000! Can you believe that?

Second shock: Dhaka city. Incredible poverty!

Travelling in the minivan makes you feel weird. The world that is just on the other side of that windshield is something you have never been used to. Its something you've never seen before. Its something people see on TV and go: wow that's unbelievable! Well, thing is that it really is unbelievable.

I still haven't found proper words to describe what we saw today. And I'm not sure I'll ever find them. It is just so different that believing that this is part of the same World we live in turns out to be very hard.