Keokradong, an incredible place where you can touch clouds   

Usually, I don’t travel simply as part of a pleasure trip. When I select a place to visit, I make it a place to explore. My recent trip with a circle of my beloved friends, from Bandarban to Keokradong and Sungsang Para, was exactly that kind of journey I am always dreaming of and trying to make meaningful. 

Our trip began on the night of September 17, when we left Dhaka by bus for Bandarban. The following morning we set out from Bandarban for Keokradong and Sungsang Para in a local vehicle known as a chander gari. We stopped for about an hour in Ruma Upazila for breakfast and completed the required registration with the tourism administration.


When we reached the resort at night, another experience was waiting for us.

Looking out through the window, it seemed as if something like mist was floating all around us. It was not quite a thick cloud, yet it did not seem to be ordinary fog either. In the dim light, the clouds-or perhaps the mist-were gathering so close to the resort window that it felt as though the mountain itself was trying to enter our room.

At one point, I stretched my hand out through the window. I felt my hand become wet. I extended my palm farther. Again, I felt the chilling touch of the cloud. Who could sleep when a piece of cloud in his palm? I kept returning to the window, stretching out my hand and repeatedly touching the clouds. I had never experienced anything like it before. And to make the experience even more unusual, there was no mobile network and no internet-we were completely cut off from the outside world. In today’s connected world, I was thrilled by the adventurous moment of having no internet or mobile phone connection. 

I was standing by the window, making love with the clouds. The clouds at night looked almost like a mist of mystery. But at dawn, the entire landscape changed. There were clouds everywhere-pure white clouds. 

It felt as though I were floating on a raft made of cotton. The clouds were below us. At times, it seemed as if I could walk across them; at other times, it felt as though there were no boundary at all between the mountains and the sky.


There is another amusing story from the journey-Boga Lake. Nine of the eleven members of our group got into the water. Watching them, it felt as though everyone had suddenly become a child again. Only Kabir bhai and I stayed out of the water. Instead, I walked around the lake and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings. Food was another chapter of this journey.

Along the way, at Munlai Para, we stopped at small places for local bananas, papaya, or sherbet.However, lunch was something entirely different. It was served in a very simple place surrounded by nature, basically under a roofed shelter. The place was called Darjeeling Para.

Nature seemed to have poured out all its beauty here. The distant blue-green mountains looked as though they were leaning against the sky. At times, clouds cast their shadows over the mountains, giving them an entirely different appearance.

In travelling, a tiny drop of rain along the way becomes extraordinary; an unexpected breakfast, water from a mountain spring, the taste of an unfamiliar dish, the laughter of friends, a strange sentence spoken in sleep, a frightening stretch of road-and, above all, a night when the clouds come through the window and enter the room.