Travel Photo of the Day: Bangladesh train during Eid holidays

And I thought this happens only in the movies or in the yellowed pages of Discovery magazine or National Geographic journal.

This is a normal scene during Eid holidays in Bangladesh. I took this photo while inside the train myself. The carriages were already cramped, with literally no leg room for you to stretch your legs. You need to go to the toilet? Forget it. You wouldn't get there unless you trample on the countless bodies of women, children, and the elderly that have claimed the train floor as their seat, or in some cases, bed. Besides, the toilet would be far from clean in this crowd, to say the least.

During this particular time when I took the photo, our train was stopped for more than two hours a few kilometers from a bridge. Apparently, there was an accident in the train behind us: one man was decapitated by a bridge. He was standing on the roof of the train probably looking at the other end with his back to the front of the train, not aware that the train was about to pass under a bridge, or maybe he miscalculated his height and that of the bridge. However it happened, the important thing is it did happen.

He was one of the passengers who had the misfortune of not having a ticket, still desperate to get to his family and made the fatal decision to go ahead and stay on top of the train despite laws banning it. Yes, riding on the roof of the train is actually prohibited in Bangladesh. But I did not see any police or railway official trying to implement it this time. Either they did not have the heart to deprive the people the opportunity to see their families, or that they did not have the courage to face what would surely become violent commuters if anybody tried. Or maybe both. They have done this for so many years anyway. But as the story of the decapitated man shows, laws are there for a reason. In this case, it is actually to protect the citizens, and not to prevent them from going home.