Dhaka

Imagine a plain flat as glass. Make this plain the earth. Cover it with concrete. From this, build up seven stories - concrete plains supported by concrete pillars, brick infill. The building goes as far as you can imagine in all directions.

Now, loose a thousand God-sized children on its roof each armed with a marker. Some draw lines as thick as arteries, others as thin as a pencil scratch. Erase the children, but leave the lines. Plunge them to the floor - these are the roads of Dhaka.

Put yourself in a road. You're small - the buildings stretch upward. Fill every occupiable place with a person. Every single place. Not a big person, a smallish person - rarely much taller than you. They all have brown skin and black hair and are wearing clothes. Lots of clothes. Clothes that stretch to cover their ankles, wrists, and heads.

The language they speak is scrolled on all the buildings. You can't read it - not even the numbers. But, as if in response to your desperation English-speakers were here before you and left their language, scattered like breadcrumbs. You follow. Weave your way through the thousands of rickshaws, the buses, the taxis, to find them - International hotel, bakery...

You collect them, slowly. Picking your way through the gongs on of a place that's something out of the imagination - out of yours.

Welcome to Dhaka.