Women washing, clothes, their children and themselves at the foot of the embankment at Sirajganj. Suring the summer, the water reaches almost to the top.

Prior to the late 1700s, the Brahmaputra River flowed farther east by up to 100 km.  It then switched, or avulsed, into a straight north-south route, possibly triggered by an earthquake in 1787.  The small river whose course it usurped was called the Jamuna River.  Now, below the avulsion point where what is now the Old Brahmaputra deviates from the present course, the Brahmaputra is called the Jamuna.  The last two days were upstream of that location.  Now we are downstream of it and thus on the Jamuna River.   Our first stop was Sirajganj.  This town is protected by a stone embankment.  The river has been migrating to the west, threatening the town.  As a result, the embankment now protrudes into the river.  When I was here in 2011 I saw several collapses along the embankment and my class

Meredith and Chris buying snacks and fruit for lunch.

saw them repairing it in 2012.  They now have a lot more riprap at the base to protect it.

We drove along the embankment, a nice promenade, to the ghat and got a fast boat.  Chris had picked out an area with a lot of diversity, so we could efficiently do our sampling.  We checked our notes and found the char that had joined to the very large stable island was not the one we visited in 2005.  That char was now a thin sliver.  We stopped at the head of Katanga Char, only 2 years old, where the high ground was stabilized by grasses and people were growing peanuts and rice on the flanks.  We then crossed a channel to the tail of the next char to the north.  Here, what had been a grass-covered highland had been

Meredith taking notes with our sporty boat in the background.

ravaged by the river.  Tufts of grass that had help on were surrounded by large scours over a meter deep.  The little remnants had the same teardrop shape as the larger chars.  Here and on another small char, we were able to collect all the samples we needed.  We headed for the ghat and our hotel with an outside chance of taking their boat to the char I visited with my students last year.  However, before arriving, we finally found green coconuts for sale.  We had been searching for days for green coconuts. The seller cuts off the top with a machete, inserts a straw and you drink the refreshing coconut water.  Afterwards, he splits it and you can eat the coconut jelly, not yet matured into the coconut meat.  To add to our enjoyment,

All that was left of a vegetated char were mounds anchored by grass that had resisted the flood surrounded by large scours. The teardrop shape was a miniature of the larger chars.

Chris also found a shop selling the wasabi potato chips he had been searching for.  With the extra stop and the slow check-in process, we abandoned visiting the char, but it was still early, so we went into Tangail for some shopping, although we found most shops closed as it was Friday.

For our last stop in the field, we continued south to the confluence, where the Jamuna meets the Ganges to form the Padma River. There are ghats for crossing the Padma and for crossing the Jamuna.  We went to the later, which is smaller now that there is a bridge over the Jamuna.  As the chars shift, so does the ghat.  We had to walk for the last ½ km to the rental boats as Babu’s van could not go.  We started at the southern end of Shivayala Char, a large char at least 30-40 years

I am still drinking the green coconut water while Humayun is already eating the jelly inside the split coconut.

old.  However, the southern end had been eroded and then grew back.  Where we were was only few years old.  From there we went to the next, newer char for examining and sampling as it showed a lot of variety on the satellite imagery.  That done, our next stop was a piece of fluviotourism, the confluence or actual meeting point of the Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers.  We stopped upstream and walked down the long narrow char.  There were huge scour pits from the turbulence of the two rivers meeting during the monsoon.  The point where the tow rivers met wasn’t as clearly defined as in 2005, but we waded around and found it our final group photo.  Our work was done and it was time to return to Dhaka for some final meetings and a last hartal, and then home.  As usual here, many things did

Boatman at Sirajganj watches Chris load a data point into his GPS. The white wind-blown sand is starting to cover the dry channel behind them.

not go as planned, but with some adjustments, everything we planned got done.

People leaving a crowded ferry at Aricha, by the confluence.

The scours pits formed by swirling eddies of water where the two rivers met during the monsoon.

Lunch on the boat.

The four of us standing a the confluence of the Brahmaputra (left) and Ganges (right) rivers.

Chris walking cross the shallow dry season Tista River. During the monsoon, it will be filled to the opposite bank in the distance.

We left the pleasant house in Kushtia to resume our nomadic existence.  We spent a full day driving to northern Bangladesh. We will now work our way downstream stopping at multiple places along the Brahmaputra River.  Finding little traffic, we drove past Rangpur, where we will be staying to the Tista River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra.  While it is a large river during the summer monsoon, today it was a shallow stream with exposed sandbanks and people growing crops in the middle of the channel.   Chris decided the hour we had before sunset was enough time, so we climbed down the embankment and hired a boat to cross the river.  It was shallow enough that we saw children wading across and Chris got out and walked the rest of the way, followed by the chidren.  Water diversion projects upstream means

Humayun standing near the eroding bank of the Brahmaputra at Chilmari. The cracks show the next places to fall off the cliff.

there is little water here in the winter.  Some exploration, some sampling, some photos and we were done.

We were up early for the long drive to the Brahmaputra.  We hadn’t planned on coming this far north, so we didn’t have maps of this years arrangement of the river.  I found two possible places for boat hires and ended up choosing Chilmari as the place easiest to get a boat.  When we got the to river agound 11am, we found a cliff.  Apparently ~1 mile of the coast had eroded here.  An old woman chastised us that we should either prevent the bank erosion or give them money so they could move.  We learned the boats were a few hundred meters upstream where you could walk down to the water’s edge.  Along the way we

Meredith examining the bedforms on the bottom of what was a channel during the monsoon season.

passed a group digging up the topsoil along the cliff to sell before it toppled into the river.  We could see the cracks where the next pieces of land would be lost.

We bought some snacks for lunch and hired a boat.  The fist char (sandy island) was unnamed, but 5 families from Bazradiarkhata Char had settled the north end and started farming, growing squash, wheat and dal.  The char was only 5-6 years old.  The families still returned to the larger char in the summer and New Bazradiarkhata Char, as we called it, was chest deep in water during the summer.  We continued north to Kachkol Char.  This char was 8-10 years old.  However, it was now attached to Bazradiarkhata Char.  The corn, wheat, dal, etc. growing was being farmed by

The villagers brought us a bench so we could sit in the shade and not get sunburnt.

people from Bazradiarkhata Char.  The village we visited were people who only moved there 6 months ago when their village and land on a char was claimed by the river.  They were working a paid laborers and did not have their own land to farm.  They were concerned that Meredith be careful of the sun so she wouldn’t get burned.  They also suggested that if she moved to the char, she could get dark like them. We then went downstream to Bazradiarkhata Char itself.  This char was formed during the major 1988 flood when 2/3 of Bangladesh was submerged. Now, 25 years later it had lots of trees homes, crops, an elementary school and an adult education center.  We were surrounded by children, particularly Meredith.  She could get the girls to pose for her,

Eroded cut banks on the side of the channel revealed the successive layers of sedimentation that built the char.

but I could not.  On the side of the village, there were great sedimentary features and Meredith and I measured a channel for some flow calculations.  At all of there sites Chris sampled and documented the sediments and vegetation cover.  By now it was getting late, so we left and circled the downstream end of New Bazradiarkhata Char.  Newer and still unpopulated, the cut banks showed amazing patterns of crossbedding from the migration of the sand waves that built the char during high water. We explored this end of the char as the sun set over the right bank of the Brahmaputra.

Today, February 21^st, is Language Day commemorating the 1952 martyrdom of students protesting Pakistan’s law making “Urdu and only

School children in Rangpur march to the local Language day memorial to pay their respects.

Urdu the language of Pakistan” when the Pakistan army opened fire.  The ultimately successful language movement in the 1950s marked the beginning of the path toward independence.   On our drive to Gaibanda, we saw numerous troups of school children heading to their local Shahid Minar, language day memorial, to pay their respects and drop off flowers.   In Dhaka people laid numerous fantastic decorations made of flowers.

Gaibanda was the opposite of Chilamari.  Here the coastline has grown outward and we had to walk out to the docks.  We later discovered that the new land filled in what was the channel we crossed to reach Rosulpur Char in 2005.  It is now attached to the mainland.  The embayment by the coast is all that is left of the channel.  Humayun again hired

Mr. Uddin explains to us the history of Manikkor Char and how he received the land his grandfather farmed when it reemerged from the river.

a boat and we went south to an area where Chris could see numerous color variations on the satellite image.  We found the land has changed substantially from the image of early January.  The channel we wanted was too shallow for the boat, so we had a very long walk. A new Landsat image to be acquired tomorrow should be close to what we saw. Where we stopped was Manikkor Char, only 6 years old.  The tree covered area to the north was Kashkhali Char, which is 13 years old. We walked towards it and met a farmer. He told us that there was a town and bazaar here 30-40 years ago, but it was lost to the river.  When it returned he received land because his grandfather had owned land here.  Such is life on the ephemeral chars.   We continued walking towards Kashkhali, but wanted to cross to another area. Only Chris

The farmer we met brought Chris samples of the muddy crusts on the sandy sediments.

and I walked through the muddy shallow waters of the embayment.  In this area, which we called New Kashkhali Char, we met another farmer, but had no translator.  Still, he helped us sample.

After finishing sampling, we went north to Rosulpur char that we visited in 2005.  We showed the people photos on my iPad, but found that most of our photos were of people who resided there only temporarily due to their land being lost.  They now lived across the channel to the east.  Still we were welcomed and follow by lots of children and a few people remembered us from 2005.  The teacher remembered Chris, but wasn’t sure about me. Overall, the village seems to be doing well with lots of corn growing on the char.  We ended early, but then had a long drive to Bogra for our hotel.

Meredith walks through the street of Rosulpur followed by the village’s children.

Me standing with the kids and women that came out to see us in Rosulpur.

View from the ghat (dock) looking towards Rosulpur. All this land is where the channel was when I was last here in 2005.

Humayun interviewing farmers about the history of shrimp and rice farming in the area.

We got to Khulna about 5 pm and met up with Chris Small, who was brought from the boat with all the Vanderbilt University people by Bachchu.  This is the last segment of my trip. The next day, we went to an area near the compaction site.  Chris had analyzed 10 years of MODIS satellite images and just west of the compaction site was an area that stood out for having increasing vegetation over that time.  We drove to the site and then continued on the small dirt road that followed the small creek.  We went around a bend and followed the road as far as we could with Chris snapping photos the whole way.  We talked to locals at two places and the second one had the answer.  Most of the rice fields were still fallow, but one area had a pump watering some fields.  We walked over and immediately

Downloading the GPS data from the compaction site in the Islam family home.

became a center of conversation.   This area had previously been converted to shrimp farming. About 15 years ago the BWDB built and embankment, which was the road we were on.  This stopped the tidal flooding of the land inside the embankment.  The shrimp company pulled out and as the land was cleared of its salt by successive monsoons, everyone switched to rice farming.  That started about 8 years ago and the land has become more productive with time.  This is what caused the long-term trend.

On our way out, we stopped at the compaction site.  The Scotts had done everything but download the GPS data. Only the mother and youngest son were home. We were welcomed warmly and served cookies and pakan-pitha, a

The house of Humayun’s aunt in Kushtia where we stayed for 3 nights.

pastry filled with a dal paste.  Then I downloaded the data and visited the wells.  We were invited for lunch and told that Mr. Islam would be upset if he knew we left without lunch, but we were already behind schedule.  We had to go on to Kushtia near the Ganges.  During the long drive, we found out that there was a hartal called for Monday.  We had to rework our plans since we had a lot of driving to do that day.  It was dark when we got to Kushtia, Humayun’s hometown.  We were surprised to find we were staying in his aunt’s house.  Only the caretaker was there and we split the 3 bedrooms.  Staying in a home reinforced the plan we had come up with.  We would need to stay here three nights. An added plus is we’re close enough to hear the protesters singing every night.

We gathered in the rain for a photo to commemorate reaching the Ganges for the first stop on our river survey.

For our new plan, we went to the Ganges downstream of Rajshahi and back so we can go locally at Kushtia during the hartal.  During the long drive it started raining.  We also had trouble finding a ghat (dock) to rent a boat.  We ended up driving to the river and then walking out on a semi-attached char (sandy island).  The mud was incredibly slippery in the rain, but I only fell once.  Chris sampled along the riverbank and then the two of us waded over to the char to sample some more.  Chris will measure the spectra of these samples back home to calibrate his satellite analysis. He will be able to distinguish the percentage of different sediment types for each pixel of the satellite image, which we will then use to better understand the changes in the rivers.  The chars move around, appear and disappear

Chris prepares to take his first sediment samples along the Ganges in the rain at Charghat.

every year during the monsoon.  Meanwhile, we were getting soaked and called it quits.  Good thing we didn’t go out on a boat for hours.

Today, is another hartal (general strike), however, we were able to walk to the Gorai River here in Kushtia.  We went to a park where a lot of boats come to take people on rides, but none were here this early.  Still, we managed to flag one down and hire it for the day.  We went up the Gorai into the Ganges and headed upstream to Ranakor Char.  We spent the day visiting three chars (sandy islands), stopping at multiple sites on each.  The cold overcast day brightened as it went on.  We did sampling and a lot of walking around examining the bedforms and varied sediment deposits.  We could see 5 different scales of bedforms from the

We spent our first day on the water using a local boat to visit several chars.

chars themselves to the tiny ripples in the lows of larger waves.  This area by Kushtia now has numerous chars and they are much more accessible than the ones we tried and failed to visit yesterday.  When we returned in the late afternoon the empty park was filled with people.

Humayun and Meredith discussing the bedforms they see on one of the chars.

After dinner, we walked over to the nightly peaceful protests calling for the death penalty for the convicted rajakers, collaborators with the Pakistani army during the 1971 liberation war. The one on the left was given a life sentence for complicity in ~380 murders prompting the popular protests.

February 13th was the first day of Spring in the Bengali calendar and many women (and some men) were dressed in orange and red with flowers in their hair to celebrate.

We passed protesters marching to Shahbagh Square, the site of huge rallies every night since the hartal.

After the resistivity, I was supposed to go to Khulna to join Scott and Scott on repairing the compaction meters.  We have two places with sets of wells where we installed optical fibers.  A local person uses a device to measure the length of the fibers each week by shining a laser through the fiber.  Unfortunately several on the fibers have broken since we installed them.  The Scotts will be repairing them, as well as the usual yearly measurements and data collecting.  They went to the northern site first – we saw them heading north while the conclave group was heading south.  I was going to join them for the southern site, but their work went so much faster than expected that they finished while I was doing resistivity.  Thus there was no need for me to go to Khulna before meeting Chris Small for the river work.  I spent the two extra days in Dhaka.  I had plenty of people to look up that I didn’t expect to have time to meet.

On the first day, Humayun and I went to the US Embassy to meet with people who couldn’t make it to the conclave due to the hartal.  Even the US Ambassador was going to meet us when he took guests to a resort in Sylhet.  As Humayun and I passed through several layers of security, we ran into the Ambassador on his way out.  We chatted for a few minutes and then went on to our meeting.  After making it back to the university for lunch, we went to the Geological Survey of Bangladesh, where my main contact has been promoted to Director General.  I showed him our results and we discussed collaborations, particularly on GPS.  All around the university women were dressed on yellow, orange and red

Banners hanging from buildings at Shahbagh Square. They are calling for the execution of the collaborators during the 1971 revolution. It is a huge popular response to the hartals calling for their release. It has been going on for the last 10 days.

saris for the first day of Bangla spring. Finally back to the Ambala Inn where I met up with the Scotts and Doug and all of us went to dinner with Chowdhury, my collaborator from the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB).  He has gotten us a huge dataset on the water levels in the rivers and in groundwater wells.  Well over a million individual measurement.  Water is so central to life in Bangladesh that there is an excellent monitoring system in place that we use to determine the amount of water impounded in Bangladesh during the monsoon.  It is over 100 billion tons of water.

The next day, we went to BITWA to try to obtain more detailed information about the tide gauges for examining sea level changes.  Tide gauges measure the height of the water relative to the land, but here the land is sinking.  We put 2 GPS

Babu, our legendary driver, in his van. This time he managed to get us into the last spot on the fast ferry across the Padma River saving us two hours.

to monitor the land subsidence next to tide gauges.  That will let us separate the sea level rise from the subsidence.  The combined effect has Bangladesh worried about land loss and water salinification.  We went meet with the wrong person twice before we finally found the correct person, a woman whose sister had been a student of Humayun’s.  It will now be straightforward to get the detailed data.  The afternoon was spent working with one of the students from the resistivity training.  Sojon wanted to go through everything in detail so he knows how to run the system.  Fayaz would have joined us, but he was out filming archeological sites with Doug.  The two of them have taken the initiative to be leaders among the group.  The 10-minute ride back to the Ambala Inn took an hour.  An area just north of the

The semi-chaotic process of loading vehicles onto the ferries was particularly bad this time after a 3 hour wait. There were several fender-benders as everyone tried to force their way in.

university has been blocked off because of the peaceful protests against the razakers, the groups that collaborated with the Pakistani army during the revolution and helped them in their killings.  The Islamist party’s hartals for the release of their leader has lead to a larger movement wanting the death sentence for him and others.  It is Occupy Dhaka.  It was very strange to see women dressing in colorful clothing yesterday with headbands calling for death for the razakers.  Finally, I arrived and waited for Meredith, the last of our party to arrive from NY for the river work.  The bad traffic meant she arrived very late.  Doug and I had a last dinner together at 11 pm in a local packed restaurant.

Today I am finally on my way to Khulna with Meredith and Humayun, with Babu as our driver, of

Meredith Reitz on the Mawa ferry on her first full day in Bangladesh.

course.  I am stuck waiting to get on the ferry across the Padma River, formed by the merger of the Ganges and Brahmaputra.  Once across, we will be in the more leisurely and relaxing south to meet up with Chris in Khulna.

The resistivity cable and electrodes laid out along the fields with the Lalmai anticline of Comilla in the distance.

After returning from Sylhet, I left Dhaka the next morning for Comilla for 4 days to train a group of Dhaka University students and graduates on operating our resistivity imaging system.  Many of the conclave people headed out to the Padma River, formed by the joining of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to do sampling for a remote sensing study of the rivers.  I will be doing this later in the trip, but had other plans now.  The transects of wells that we are drilling provide detailed vertical records of the sediments, but how do we connect the dots when the wells are 3-4 km apart?  It turns out we can do it with electricity.  Clay and mud has much lower electrical resistivity (or higher conductivity) than sands.  The basic technique it to pound two pairs of electrodes (stainless steel rods) into the ground. We then use a car battery to

Sojon and Fuad coiling up the cables at the end of the day. It is important to collect the electrodes first or you cannot find them after the cable is gone.

send a current between one pair and measure the voltage at another pair.  The voltage depends on the rock type between the 4 electrodes.  For our system, we have 84 electrodes that can be spaced up to 9 m apart and a long cable in 12 sections to connect them.  A sophisticated resistivity device then sends current to one pair and measures the voltage at up to 8 other pairs at a time.  The device is programed to do measurements with thousands of different combinations.  The result is similar to doing and electrical catscan of the earth showing the distribution of sand and mud.

I came to Comilla with 6 trainees, Fayaz, Sojon, Jia, Rabi, Fuad and Paval.  During the 4 days, they will work with me to learn to use the system

Fuad standing over the resistivity meter monitoring as the measurements come in.

well enough to be able to carry out these surveys on their own.  For the training site, we came to Comilla where to work around the Lamai anticline. It is the westernmost hill sticking up out of the floodplain.  To help interpret the structure creating the anticlines, we need to know the dip, or slope, of the folded beds.  This has been roughly done from topography, but the exposed topography is partly eroded.  We want to image the boundary between the older Pleistocene sediments of the anticline and the younger Holocene sediments that cover them.  Both sediments are similar, but the surface exposed during the last glacial period when sea level was 120 m lower has been altered to clay.  This should show up as a dipping layer of low resistivity. We will do 4 lines, two on each side of the anticline to image the dipping beds.

Jia, Sojon, Pavel Babu, Rabi (cut off) and Fayaz having dinner at BARD cafeteria. We ate Bangladeshi style with our hands. The food line can be seen in the background.

Our first day was short because of the time it took to get here.  We laid out a short line with 56 electrodes a short distance south of one of the wells that was drilled on the east side of the anticline.  The car batteries we took along were not fully charged, so we hooked up Babu’s van to provide more power.  That worked well and decided to use the car to run the equipmet the rest of the days.  However, that meant the lines had to be where a car could go.  Humayun did not join us because his wife has been ill.  That meant we didn’t have a GPS to record positions or track where we were. We managed to use the GPS in my camera to get the positions of the line. We moved to our home for the next few days, the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development or BARD.

Sojon downloading the data to a laptop after completing a line.

The next day we shifted to the west side the next day.  Google Earth became our tool for finding sites.  With a USB modem we had slow, but continuous internet.  We found a set of fields close to the one of our drill sites.  We navigated to it by recognizing buildings, mostly gas stations from Google Earth.  The fields were fallow, so we could cut across them. Everything was going smoothly.  We finished early and I was able to spend the late afternoon teaching the students.  That evening we processed the data for both lines.  The first one showed the boundary we were looking for to be very shallow.  A river had eroded part of the anticline.  Thus we were on top of it and not on the flank.  Good data, but it didn’t provide us with a slope.  The other line had noise problems from a power line, but clearly showed the layer we wanted dipping ~3° to the west.  The system was providing hard data.

Farmers planting rice in the fields. These muddy fields were too wet for us to use for the resistivity line, so we had to use the roadside.

We still needed a line on the east.  We tried our first site, but Babu’s van could not drive to the line location. On to plan B, a country road on the west side.  We drove our electrodes into the fields at the base of the road being careful not to disturb the growing vegetables. The data was marred by some power lines, but showed our layer for part of the line. It lined up well with the previous day’s results. For our final day, we need a good line on the east.  I picked several candidates on Google Earth.  The first was inaccessible, but I quickly found another road and we did it there.  Because they were planting rice, the side of the elevated road was not useable.  The top turned to not be that good a place.  The data was much worse quality than any of the other sites.  Still, it gave reasonable results.  Humayun and Doug came out, so we interspersed working on the resistivity line with filming.  That line competed our work here and the training and we all headed back to Dhaka. The students were trained and we learned how to select good sites.

Doug (with Diane) shows off his 3D camera after my interview.

Now that the hartal was over, we were free to travel as we wished.  We also switched film crews.  Doug and Diane from Earth Images are independent filmmakers that make PBS specials.  They arrived in Dhaka on the morning of Feb 6 during the hartal, so could not travel here.  Humayun arranged for them to be picked up by an ambulance, exempt from the hartal, and taken to the Ambala Inn to wait out the strike.  That meant they were able to spend the day walking around getting footage of Dhaka without cars, a rarity. Colorful bicycle rickshaws ruled the road.  They left Dhaka in the afternoon when the hartal was dying down and arrived at the Shuktara around 11 pm.

Some women who work feeding stones into a rock crusher stopped to pose for us. Making gravel for construction is a major industry at the edge of the Shillong Plateau.

The geology that we saw over the hartal changed our drilling plans.  Steve Goodbred was excited enough by what he saw to change the day’s well from the flat floodplain to the back of the anticline.  He and the Vanderbilt team went there early in the morning with the AMNH film team to get their last shots before heading to Dhaka.  That meant the rest of us had to stay away.  Most of the group went to the Sylhet anticline outcrops near the cricket stadium and airport.  I later learned that they found clear evidence of rivers cutting through the anticline while it was growing.  It caused mud deposits from the ponding on one side and gravels from the steeper slope on the other.  I was recruited by Doug for an interview and to take him up to the Jaflong area by the Shillong Plateau so he could film that.  Nafisa and Mosher stayed with us.  After they watched my interview from behind a

The pit we visited a few days before had now revealed some large buried boulders from the Rangapani River. The boulders in the background are still there because they are in India.

wall, our group headed north.  At the site where Nano gave us an overview, I repeated his story with a 3D camera rolling.  Nafisa, Mosher and I held conversations about the geology while Doug filmed us over and over.  We then went over to the Rangapani River where border guards stopped us and informed us that foreigners were not allowed to film there.  After some explanation from Nafisa, they call their superiors and we were OKed.  The pits we had seen a few days before were now deeper and the miners had uncovered a large tree trunk and exposed boulders up to 6 ft across.  We continued our conversations for the camera until the border guards told us it was time for us to go.  Doug still tried to get more footage, including outcrops out of site of the guards until they followed and saw us still going. We left peaceably.

Drilling a tube well at the Sylhet anticline. The lever lifts and drops the drill pipe, while the last team member uses his hand as a valve to create a pumping action. A slurry of sediment and water is emerging from the top of the pipe. This setup can drill a 100m well in a day.

All the filming and multiple takes meant there was no time for Jaflong itself.  We rushed back to the Sylhet Anticline in time to catch the drilling before it got dark.  Since we only had a short ride back to the hotel instead of a 1-2 hr drive,  a car full headed to Sylht City for shopping.  As it was the last night of the conclave, we had a barbeque on the deck on the roof of one of the bungalows.  They barbequed fish and tandoori chicken along with a host of other dishes and a procured bottle of vodka.  An excellent end to the meeting.

The next day it was time to head back to Dhaka, stopping at a few of the anticlines from southern Sylhet on the way.  As usual, getting everyone out and the cars loaded up took longer than expected.  Nano and Ellie decided to stay another day in Sylhet and then go straight to the airport rather than have a day in Dhaka.  Our group was shrinking.  Jenn and Sanzida had already left early

We finally remembered to pose for a group photo just before leaving the Shuktara Nature Retreat in Sylhet to head back to Dhaka. From left to right: Doug, Diane, Nsno, Steve, Lauren, Chris P., Saddam, Humayun, Fayaz, Ellie, Mike, Carol, Mosher, Chris S. and Nafisa.

because of ill relatives.  A few people had canceled because of illness.  We were down to about a dozen people heading to Dhaka.  However, the defections and splitting of the groups the last few days made the field stops less unwieldy and more efficient.  On the way south, we had a quick stop at Sreemongal, where a group from Singapore we are collaborating with put in a GPS. Then we saw tea gardens, a sure sign of an anticline.  Tea needs well-drained soils and cannot be grown on the floodplains.  However, the first tea plants were on flat land.  The rising anticline had uplifted some of the floodplain on its flank, another useful observation.  Then we entered the Rashidpur anticline proper.  Several stops revealed that the dips of the beds were not preserved, limiting the value of the outcrops.  We stopped for lunch in a tea garden and continued on to our GPS station and seismometer at a school in Chunarughat.  In

A statue of a woman picking tea leaves on the anticline, which was covered with tea plantations.

2007 when we installed the site, we found the building we originally selected was unsuitable.  It was brick made to look like reinforced concrete.  We found this site by driving down the main street of the town on a Friday night.  We found this school and contacted the headmistress, visiting her at her home on the weekend evening. The next morning we installed the site. Now on this visit, Humayun and I were again pressed into service for filming, along with a Nafisa, Mosher and Fayaz.  By the time it was finished, we had to head straight back to Dhaka.  Some quick stops at the next anticline revealed it too had poor outcrop. We then hit some of the worst traffic I had ever seen.  The highway into Dhaka, never very fast, was at a standstill.  Babu, our driver, turned around and led

Steve and Carol study the rocks at an outcrop on the side of a hill of tea plants.

us through back streets to alternative routes until we found one that was moving.  It was almost 10 pm by the time we reached our hotel and officially ended the conclave and part one of my trip. Still it was extremely successful, pulling together the different groups and changing the direction of our research.

The AMNH film crew interviews Ellie.

Our experience in in Bangladesh in nothing will go as planned, but somehow we are able to get everything done.  Living in this ever changing land beset by numerous natural disasters has made Bangladeshis incredibly resilient and adaptable.  This was tested over the last few days – and may continue to be over the next weeks – by a hartal.  A hartal is a strike in which transportation is shut down.  The party calling it sets up roadblocks and attacks cars and buses on the streets.  Bicycle rickshaws and the green baby taxis are OK.  This one was called by Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamic party.  The reason was that their leader was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes during the 1971 Independence War.  The religious

Walking up the anticline, we examine the outcrops near the Khadim tea factory.

parties supported remaining part of Pakistan and are accused of helping the Pakistani Army in killings.  Estimates are that 3 million people were killed in the war for independence with Hindus and intellectuals particularly targeted.  The leader on trial was specifically accused of killing 12 and assisting in the killing of 369 others.  The problem is that the Jamaat-e-Islami is part of the opposition coalition and many believe the trials are politically motivated to take down part of the opposition before the elections later this year.

On Feb 5, there was a hartal called that ran from 6am-6pm.  Driving around in our vans was our of the question.  Luckily, it was the day to visit outcrops on the Sylhet anticline, where our hotel is.  The sites at the airport and cricket stadium

At the forested anticline we saw a number of monkeys.

were out of the question.  We found out later that there were bombs thrown in Sylhet, although, thankfully, no one was hurt by them.  The third area of outcrops we planned to visit were right by our hotel.  We walked to the sites situated by the tea gardens and tea factory to see them.  They were not the greatest outcrops, but still provided valuable new data and discussions.  We returned to the hotel for a late biryani lunch, a step up from the cold packet lunches we’re been having.  For the rest of the afternoon, we held discussions around our large poster-sized maps, or relaxed.   The Bangladeshi students took advantage of the early night to go into town after the hartal ended.  This was also the day that the AMNH team was doing interviews, so we were able to have people walk back and forth to their makeshift studio in one of their rooms.

To travel around during the hartal, we pilled into a small pickup truck.

More serious was when a second day of hartal was called for Feb. 6.  The visit of the U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh to our group was cancelled.  But what were we to do now? We were to visit outcrops to the north and one of our drilling sites.  After exploring several options, Humayun rented a very small pickup truck.  This type of vehicle should be exempt from the hartal.  To play it safe, we started our work by continuing along the same small road over the anticline that we walked on the day before.  There are no roadblocks on a small country road.  We continued the geologic work over the anticline. These young weathered sediments were hard to interpret confidently. However, we did see the dips of the strata switch from towards the south to towards the north

A local elementary school for the villagers on the Sylhet anticline. A super zoom camera is good for shooting into the classroom.

as we went over the crest of the anticline.  We crossed where the floodplain sediments lap up against the folded strata.  Our excitement about the interactions we are having in the field continues to grow.  After completing this part of the drive, we came to a decision point.  Would we continue to the main road and risk facing a possible roadblock?  Did we want to travel that far on the back of a pickup?  In the end, our group split up.  The film crew rented a baby taxi and went off to get footage of the countryside.  A second group walked back to the road over the anticline to visit more outcrop and pick potential drilling sites.  Steve Goodbred was excited enough by what we saw to change tomorrow’s drilling site from the floodplain to the anticline.  The interaction

We made it to Jaintiapur despite the hartal where Humayun showed us the evidence of a long gap in sedimentation that resulted in the devlopment of a particular rock indicating a long exposure.

at the conclave was now altering our project plans.  It is working. The last group, including myself, continued as planned with the pickup.  Not only was there no roadblock, but it was a pleasure to drive through Bangladesh with so few cars on the road and so little traffic.  We got to the well site as they reached the maximum depth they could drill.  Gas in the sediments impeded the drillers ability to lift the sediments out of the hole. We could see the gas bubbling up.  We continued on to Jaintiapur and took a pleasant hike through a new set of outcrops and beautiful views.  I personally found the evidence of a long gap in sedimentation 20-30 million years ago puzzling.  As darkness fell, we had to leave the solution for another day.  But at least the 2-day hartal was over.

The Madhabkundu Waterfall formed due to faulting of the Patheria anticline.

Up to now, each group in our Bangladesh project has worked individually on fieldwork in their subject of expertise. Now that our project is now in it’s third year, we decided it was time to get together in the field to integrate our results. A major focus of the project is the interaction of tectonic forces and sedimentary processes. This week, is our opportunity to have experts on each interpreting the same outcops together. We have gathered a group of 9 Americans and 7 Bangladeshis in Sylhet in NE Bangladesh to what we have termed the “conclave”. I guess we have to send up a puff of white smoke if we all agree. Sylhet is an area where the large basement block of the Shillong Plateau and the Dauki Fault that bounds it meets the fold belt of the Burma Arc with its tea garden covered anticlines. It is also has a rapidly subsiding basin being filled with sediments in which the level of the rivers go up and down with sea level. Lots to see through different prisms. On top of the excitement of the conclave, we have a film crew from the American Museum of Natural History with us for the first 6 days to make a video to be shown in the AMNH and other museums about our project and the science we have been working on. After they finish, will we have another film crew from a company that makes PBS documentaries following us.

Steve Goodbred examines the rocks at the Madhabkundu waterfall.

Everyone is doing their individual fieldwork before or after the conclave. Several of us arrived in Bangladesh just before the conclave, while others drove over from their fieldwork in western Bangladesh and two crossed the border from studying the Shillong Plateau in India. We all arrived and filled all of the rooms in the Shuktara Nature Retreat. For our first day, we headed to the Patheria Anticline with the Madhabkundu Waterfall. While the waterfall was spectacular, if took most of the day to get there. Pulling out maps after breakfast, we spent time discussing the region, slowed by the filming. Then the drivers took a wrong turn that took us and hour out of our water plus another ½ hour to double back via a faster road. It was 2:30 by the time we got there and almost 3:00 when we finally reached the falls. While there were great outcrops, we only had a hour there before having to start back. It was too late to visit our second stop and quite late before our cranky group got back to the resort for dinner. Overall, a disastrous first day.

Nano Seeber explaining the geology to the conclave group.

Having gotten our bad day out of the way early, we had nowhere to go but up. And it did. We headed north toward the border with India and the Shillong Plateau. At the first stop we got an overview and our first view of the 2000 m high mountain and the geology while standing on one of the folds that mark the frontal area of the Dauki thrust fault. Then we went on to the Rangapani River where the large boulders are washed down from the plateau. There is a huge industry in Bangladesh mining rocks and gravel from the rivers along the border. Bangladesh has a shortage of rock that can be used in construction, particularly making concrete. The Indian border is clearly marked by the presence of rocks. On the Bangladeshi side they have all been stripped away and they are digging

Mining of rocks from the Rangapani River. The edge of the boulders in the distance is the Indian border.

pits to mine the rocks from the older river sediments. This results in beautiful exposure of the sediment layers and we scrabbled around in a pit while the workers mined the rocks around us. After a brief stop at the border crossing where trucks bearing rocks enter Bangladesh, we went to Jaflong, where the mining industry is even larger. The amazing thing about Jaflong is that besides being an industrial site with rock mining and noisy rock crushers, it is also a tourist site where people come to see the mountain. There are tourist kiosks, snack stands and guides mixed in with the industry. For us, there were also outcrops of the older strata from before the uplift of the Plateau. Our final stop was a visit to our GPS and seismometer station at Jalfong. Humayun and I were filmed explaining our work there while the others visited the geology exposed on the side of the hill we were on.

Humayun and Chris discussing the geology at Jaflong with Eocene limestone in the background.

Day 3 was an exciting trip up the Shari River. We rented three wooden country boats and sailed up the river, crossing through exposures of sediments of various ages. The originally horizontal layers of strata have been deformed from the tectonics. The dip of the sediments started at 38° then increased to nearly vertical before decreasing back to ~45°. This folding is due to the sediments riding over structures beneath, possibly a fault. We also saw that the oldest sediments were marine and the seceding layers went to estuarine and then fluvial (rivers) due to the increasing amount of sediments coming from the Himalaya. Our boats traveled together and occasionally leap frogged from outcrop to outcrop. Chris Paola, our river specialist, also noted changes in the shape of the river indicating active tectonics. Our group of specialists is coalescing into a team. Meanwhile, we passed other teams of people dredging the sand and gravel from the river bottom using buckets into their boats.

Our boats arriving at an outcrop along the Shari River.

Bachchu, organizer of the boat trip, with the crew of the M/V Kokilmoni. Bachchu is the one wearing a hat.

After waking up in the Rupsa River in Khulna, we watched as the Vanderbilt University group studying sedimentation around Polder 32 arrived on Bachchu’s boat.  They pulled up alongside and we spent some time catching up with each other’s trips before it was time to hit the road.  Our last site is nearly at the northernmost tip of Bangladesh.  This one is for tectonics.  The 2-km high uplift block of Shillong, is roughly coincident with the Indian state of Meghalaya (Abode of the Cloud). It was the site of a M8.1 earthquake in 1897, although the exact fault that ruptured is uncertain.   Our existing GPS indicate that it is moving south at ~7mm/y, but there is a suggestion that it is rotating clockwise, meaning the western end would be moving slower.  Our GPS is going in Bangladesh just to the west of Shillong.  However, the Brahmaputra River has eroded away the western margin and buried the remnants under sediments.  We have to be far enough north to be on the Shillong-Assam block and away from the several faults on its southern side.  We settled on the town of Bharungamari. It is literally the end of the road, only a few miles from the Indian border.

Humayun with his sister-in-law and nephew in his family home in Kushtia.

So we set off on a 400 km drive.  Along the way, we stopped at Kushtia and visited Humayun’s childhood home and met his sister-in-law and nephew.  Then lunch and across the Ganges River.  At our first flat tire, we has tea in a small shop – Humayun had them pour boiling water on the glasses for us.  At the second it was green cocoanuts.  The driver switched to the spare tire while Sarah attracted a large crowd of locals.  When we finally got to the hotel it was almost 10pm, about 12 1/2 hours after we left the Kokilmoni. At least it is one of the nicer hotels that I have stayed at in Bangladesh.

Sarah and Humayun sipping tea in a local shop while our flat tire was being repaired.

The next morning was a more leisurely 8am departure.  For breakfast, we were joined by Atiqulla, one of Humayun’s fourth year students who is from Bhurungamari.  He scouted the site and would lead us there, the local hospital.  We squeezed the extra person into the van and headed north.  We got there late morning, scouted out the roof and located a site for the antenna and for the receiver.  Getting there meant walking through a hallway with beds containing patients at the hospital. It seems we have had two modes during this trip, either start very early and then have breakfast at noon, or have breakfast first and then have lunch after 4pm.  This was the latter.  You could tell we were getting worn out.  We were having more trouble keeping track of some of the small screws and tools we needed.  We started running out of anchors for attaching cables to the wall.  Still, we got it done, although it is not our prettiest site..  However, Humayun did a great job with the grounding rod, having a channel cut in the concrete apron around the building, running the wire through a conduit and then recementing over it.

Fayaz climbs the ladder to the upper roof where we installed the antenna and solar panel. We had to be careful of the very large spaces between rungs.

By the time we were done, it was 3:30 and the hospital administrator and some of the staff came to see the site.  By the time Humayun finished explaining th purpose of the GPS, we were more than ready to get some lunch.  What I didn’t know was that we were invited to Atiqulla house for lunch.  We went to the house of his extended family, parents, siblings and nieces and nephews where we were served a feast.  The five of us ate while the family and a large group of neighbors looked on and chatted with us.  We had chicken, squab and beef along with boiled and pilao rice, paratha (bread), vegetables, dal (lentils), and cucumbers.  A veritable feast and a good ending for the last GPS installation.

Atiqulla, in the red shirt, with his family at their home in Bhurungamari.

We stuffed our selves and headed back to Dhaka, staying overnight at Bogra, 4 hours away. Along the way we passed celebrations of Durga Puja, the largest Hindu festival in Bangladesh, and lots of cattle and other animals being transported for Eid ul-Azha, the feast of the sacrifice, to be celebrated this weekend.  After arriving in Bogra, we celebrated with a beer at the first bar I’ve ever seen in Bangladesh.

A statue of Durga with her 10 arms in a Pandal set up for the festival.

Humayun and one of the two armed guards to protect us from tiger attacks.

We sailed out of the small channel we were anchored in to the Sibsa River and then to the south. We passed the western side of Polder 32 with a good view of the embankment that protects the island then passed into the Sundarbans forest with mangrove trees on either side of the wide river.  Hiron Point is close to the mouth of the river where it empties into the Bay of Bengal.  Perhaps empties is not quite the right word as the river is tidal, flowing both ways.  Moreover, the mud that maintains the Sundarbans probably comes from the sea.  The sediment discharged by the combined Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Rivers is swept westward along the coast and some of it is carried inland by tides and storms.  How much is still a topic of research. We prepared the equipment in the bow while watching for tigers along the shore. We reached our anchorage after about 8 hours and enjoyed a BBQ on the top deck. Then, at last, an early night.

The Hiron Point Tide gauge continuously measuring the water level relative to the land. Its decades-long record shows the combined effects of sea level rise and land subsidence.

Just after 6AM we loaded the launch and headed into the channel with the forest station after watching the sunrise.  We were accompanied by two armed guards, required in the Sundarbans, although we don’t expect tigers at the ranger station. The first thing we passed was the tide gauge, the reason we are putting the GPS as this particular location.  It is well known and its data is available in a global repository for tide gauge data. We landed at the third dock belonging to the forest service.  The path to the ranger station proudly announced the Sundarban as a World Heritage Site and through in a couple of caged tiger statues as well.  We met the forest ranger and were told that there is no cell phone service, contradicting what we had been told.  During the winter there is a weak signal. That was going to be a problem for downloading the data. We headed to the roof and for once, the ladder was already in place.

Sarah climbing the ladder up to the roof of the ranger station. One of the many eccentric ladders of Bangladesh in my collection.

The roof had a low brick wall around its perimeter.  Brick is much weaker than reinforced concrete and not considered stable enough for GPS.  Our two foot threaded rod was long enough to get us 5” into the concrete is we drove the long drill bit all the way to the chuck.  It would have to do.  The GPS went into a secure room with communications equipment.  By now our experienced team split into our familiar tasks.  Sarah figured out a way to get the cables to the roof by tying them to a rope after going through the wall.  After some effort, I managed to drill the wall to the maximum depth. With the poor to nonexistent cell signal, we set up a yagi directional antenna and pointed towards the closest cell phone tower some 60 km away.

Humayun, Sarah and myself sitting next to the completed antenna with the Sundarbans in the background.

We got everything set up, but the cellular connection didn’t work.  Next step is to hope that we can establish a connection in the winter and be able to seasonally download the data.  Having to return regularly to download the data or come back to set up a radio link would be expensive, although the Sundarbans is a wonderful place.  We said our goodbyes and headed back to the M/V Kokilmoni without having seen either a tiger or a crocodile, although we saw a lot of mudskippers, a personal favorite of mine while leaving.

Mudskippers, the small fish that spend most of their time jumping around out of the water for safety. They hold water in their cheeks so that they can breathe.

We weighed anchor and headed back north to Khulna.  The crew spotted a crocodile, but I missed it while uploading blogs.  Going north, we had left the calm of the Sundarbans and returned to the modern electronic world of cell phones and internet. One more GPS to go, but it is in far northern Bangladesh, a 380 km drive from Khulna where we get off the boat tomorrow.

THe four of us on the steps of the ranger station with the ranger (white beard), his staff, guards (in khaki), and crew from the Kokilmoni after the successful installation.