Happy Bengali New Year!

Bangladesh celebrates New Year today with large outdoors festivities, music, processions, dance and fairs.
This is a non-religious holiday and it has a uniting and joyous character. Like a Rio Carnival minus  bikinis and  beach, add covering clothes and sweat, keep the heat and the crowds. Welcome year 1423!

The party begins early in the morning, continues with large lunches together with family friends and relatives and also includes shopping, preferably jewellery.
Well, this is what I was told. 

Getting up at sunrise was not an option for me but there were large crowds even later in the morning when I wandered in my residential area. Dhaka University is the hotspot of the day but that will be next year. A newcomer has to start somewhere.

This applies also to an abundant New Year's meal. My stomach has been kind of rebellious. And ok, I have no family here, so no lunch invitations.. 
What concerns shopping, I was a rather good new year's celebrator. No jewellery but a pair of gold colored sandals.

People are dressed in their best clothes, the color code is red and white.
Women  have flower decorations in their hair and they wear perfect makeup.
It is a mystery how they can look so beautiful in this heat (38 Celcius and very humid). I left home looking relatively normal but came back like a soaked panda with mascara running down to ears, hair glued to scalp and sweat dripping from top to toe.

On New Year's Eve we had another earth quake in Dhaka. The epicenter was 400 kilometers east of Dhaka in Myanmar. The strength was 6.9. 
I was at yoga during the tremor. I thought that my muscles were shaking because of the exercise. It was only after the class we realized that the fitness center was emptied (minus the yogis) and phones were filled with concerned messages.