Visiting 600 Years Old Mosque: My 10 Years Old Travel Story

Very often, I am asked a query my travel stories about my own country by some of my Hive friends, like @goldgrifin007, who love blogs on travelling. Regarding Bangladesh, I have a tiny number of posts and I also want to share more about my country but my scopes are just limited. And due to the lack of Informations very few foreigners visit Bangladesh which is really a pathetic story for us while we have some amazing beauty of the nature, nice welcoming people, and many old architectural archeological relics. There are many reasons behind it, as I have been living in China since 2019 and I started blogging in late 2021, so I got more travelling stories in Beijing. It doesn't mean that I did not have enough travel stories from my own country. I have a lot of them as I have been quite a good explorer since 2010 when I first went to Dhaka from a rural village. But at that time, cameras were very luxurious products for families like us as my parents were not able to afford them. I had a NOKIA 1208 button phone that cost around 1600 Bangladeshi Taka at that time for emergency calling only. I bought my first Java phone in 2012 when I was preparing for my university admission with around 4000 BDT; it was a Chinese brand phone, which was my first access to a camera, as a complete camera was more expensive to have for me.

As an explorer, I have started using that phone for my travel photos but in very limited quantity as it was not good to take shots. I can still remember I had bought several 4GB memory cards to store my favorite songs and pictures as a lifelong memory. After I bought my first laptop, as it was very important in University life, I started taking more photos with my 2nd phone Samsung Galaxy S3, a second-hand phone that I bought with my income by tutoring some middle school students around 2015 and then I bought my first new smartphones which were Huawei Nova 2i, which I have used more than 2 years in China, and then I bought my current one with the best camera phone I have ever used. After more than 4 years of using it, I am going to grab the next one in the coming years, hopefully. And hopefully I will expose the unseen beauty of my country from my tours to Bangladesh but currently I ma having very limited time span for these kind of activities due to my profession and family time managements in my recent tours to Bangladesh.

So, all of these photos are really sucking in quality as they are from my Java phone, more than 10 years in 2013. I can still remember; it was October 2013 and a Friday when I visited one of the most popular destinations in southern Bangladesh, 'Shat Gambuz Masjid' (sixty-dome mosque), though the total dome of the mosque is 81. It is located in the Bagerhat district which was not so far from my University campus; so I had paid the visit with one of my friend on a Friday. We also prayed our Jumma prayer in the mosque, which is a lifetime experience for both of us. The mosque is a 600 years old one as it was constructed in the 15 century by a religious scholar called Khan Jahan Ali, who spread Islam in this region of the country.

We set out in the morning, around 10 am, and took the bus from the Gopalganj district, and it took about one hour to reach the mosque. We needed to change the transportation to a local one as there was no direct bus there. As the Jumma day prayer stars usually at 1:30 but we reached there around 11:30. So we had enough time to explore the surrounding also. We have visited the surrounding areas to spend the time.

The red color of the mosque is still upholding the history for also long time. Though many parts have been repaired but one wall is kept as it was a preserved part of the mosque. And the surrounding huge area is covered with green grass carpet and there are many trees and garden in the surrounding area of the Mosque complex.

The Majar (tomb) of Khan Jahan Ali is also a popular destination and it was not so far from the Mosque area. So, we decided to visit the Majar also. We walked towards the Majar which is also red in appearance. But the area of the Majar complex is quite smaller than the total Mosque area.

My friend bought some candle and other things for the donation to the mosque but I did nothing as I knew many people do businesses in these Majars. Also, it is prohibited to do such activities in a tomb. But unfortunately, there were so many people doing many prihibited things in the Majar.

After visiting the tomb, we returned to the mosque area and visit the large pond created by Khan Jahan Ali to supply sweet water to this area as the area is clos to the sea and most of the water sources are affected with the saltiness. And we did our Odhu and prepared for the Jumma prayer. And after prayer we returned to our University campus. It was really a great day in my University life.

I hope you like my old photos from 2013 with a very handy Java phone from one of my earliest travels to the southern region of Bangladesh. It was an amazing experience to have had at that time in my life! If you have any queries, let me know in the comments, and I will try my best to answer them.

Thanks a lot for your time and attention. I will catch up with you at the next one.
Wish you a day!