Australian Celebrity FAM trip to Bangladesh as a place for Meaningful Travel

The Journey for the FAM trip began 6 months ago when Experience Bangladesh director in Australia got China Southern Airlines, mg media communications on board to put together the rockstar team of Travel journalists from Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Sun, Get Lost Magazine, Mind Food magazine, FairFax, Escape Ltd. and Australian Travel.

Experience Bangladesh in the US, Bangladesh, and Australia with the help of their partons/sponsors like Pan Pacific, Ajiyer, Jatrik etc. made this a “idea” a reality after months of planning and contingency plans rolled out by the Experience Bangladesh teams.

Here are some excerpts of memorable conversations between Experience Bangladesh and the journalists through out the trip:

Joanna, like each of the journalists sat next to me on the road trips for 2 hrs to ask about the essence of Sustainable living in Bangladesh and why Experience Bangladesh does all that they do every day. Sarah attempted to explain concepts of ancestral energy in the villages that is the anchor of “Meaningful Travel” and laid out the steps of spiritual awakening that travelers experience to the core.

As she walked through the villages of Tangail and then met the women in Sundarban, she whispered, ” I see what you meant by feeling the generosity of spirit and the innocence of the people” that moves you.

Paul Sheehan used one phrase throughout the trip whenever he spoke to me, “I am feeling very protective of you”. This was his way to showing what he later understood as “Maya”. By the end of the trip he hugged the Experience Bangladesh team and said, “I feel Maya for you.” As he used his intuition to find the path back to the boat from Laodep, where we went to meet the women from the MRDI project, he commented, “Now I understand why you are so passionate about highlighting Bangladesh and why its so important to preserve the way of life of these people.”
He enjoyed the trip to the fullest, always the first to join a dance mob, the last to leave the table after relishing every bite on his plate, the first to start a conversation with strangers and the one who asked the most difficult questions on the group : )

 Helen Anderson sent us an email raving about the National Assembly Building and how envious her architect friends were of her for going to the land where this magnificent structure stood. Our Experience Bangladesh got to work in a heart beat and Samad pulled out rabbits out of his bag of tricks making is possible for all of us to not only visit the Parliament Building, private tour and all, but also managed a luncheon in the auspicious compound. The parliamentary session chamber was a “goosebump” experience for all of us. Throughout the trip, Helen bonded with the team asking deep philosophical questions about what sustainable tourism meant for Bangladesh. We found ourselves simply saying, “Its all we have got and the ONLY way we can practice tourism”.

Gillian Cumming talked about her love of gourmet cooking. She stopped us dead in our tracks when she casually mentioned making “Gulap Jamoon” from scratch 30 years ago. This is just a small example of the calm and elegant feminine power she holds and used to roll out the endless news inserts and magazines in the past 17 years. She quickly took down a recipe of our traditional beef curry that takes 2 hours to cook and smiled, “Now I have something authentic to cook for the gathering as soon as I get back!”

The trip to Sundarban was about a lot more than l”ooking for the tiger and finding the jungle” as my friend Daleep Akoi calls it. Visiting the MRDI project where women that used to rely solely on fishing in the Sundarban, selling “Gol Patha” indigenous palm leaves and honey catching, now sell artistically embroidered goods that is a safer profession, gives them access to additional revenue and helps them preserve their mangrove forest; opened their eyes to what sustainable living practices looked like in the everyday lives of the people of Sundarban.

The Wild Team Project in Chadpai was equally rewarding with a live demonstration at the exact site of where the night patrol guard the village from tigers. We had an enthusiastic volunteer of the First Response team act as an actual tiger!

 

Our wildlife experts Najm Sheikh and Bachchu bhai took us out at the crack of dawn for bird watching and called out names of birds from their calls.

The trip ended with a farewell dinner at the Australian High Commissioners’ Mr Greg Wilcock and Ms Wilhelmina van Beers, for a night of partying hard, live music and a lot of dancing!

Source: http://www.experiencebangladesh.com/travel/australian-celebrity-fam-trip-to-bangladesh-as-a-place-for-meaningful-travel/