The town falls away behind us, and the water takes over. Soon you're gliding through a green maze — canals so narrow the guava branches meet above your head, water so still it holds the whole sky. Somewhere ahead, you hear it before you see it.
The market.
Hundreds of wooden boats loaded with the fruit locals call Bengal's Apple — trading on this water since before cars existed, before trains reached Bengal. When your great-great-grandparents were children, this market already looked exactly like it does today. The families here have been doing this for over 200 years: orchards passed from grandfather to father to son, hand to hand, generation after generation, on the same quiet water.
And you won't just watch. We'll pull up beside an orchard where you can reach into the branches and pick a guava yourself — your own harvest, eaten right there on the boat, still cool from the leaves. Then lunch beside the canal, at a local spot I trust — simple, fresh, cooked the way this region has always eaten: unhurried, generous, close to the water.
By the time we turn back, you'll understand something most visitors to Bangladesh never see: a whole economy that floats.