The last forest, its lost children

Inam Ahmed

Source: Madhubanti Anashua

This is the boat we travelled on for 19 hours to the destination.

That was my fastest waking up from sleep.
For a while I wondered where I was and why I was not sleeping in the middle of the night. I got the answers instantly.
It was not raining but pouring on me, the water coming through the rickety thatched roof of the bamboo house. My sleeping bag was getting wet, my camera and backpack too.
I bolted up in a flash. I must have beaten any world record in dismantling the mosquito net and packing up a sleeping bag.
Now I knew why my Chakma host was insisting that I slept in the next room. But after a nine-hour journey without food on a small wooden boat — so small that you cannot even rest your back against anything — I felt like closing my eyes wherever I could spread my sleeping bag.
And at this hour, here in this remote place in Khagrachhari I heard the distant thunders rolling, echoed by the hills around. I could see the deep forest in front of my cabin in the sudden flashes across the sky.
But then I was happy and wished for more rain. Because tomorrow I was to travel even deeper into the forest. But Gangaram, the narrow river that I was following, had dried up because there was no rain in the past few days.