You can’t visit Bangladesh during monsoon season and not talk about the mud.

Today I was up to my ankles in it — until the project people we were traveling with whisked us onto a bicycle rickshaw. This is my view from the back of it, clinging to the bicycle seat with one hand and my dogeared notebook with the other.

But even with the ride I was still caked with mud. I conducted half a dozen interviews with squishy sandals and splattered trousers. No one seemed to mind.

Mud has a way of slowing you down, making you think. I walked through it meditatively, wondering what it would be like to live with it for months of every year, to plant saplings in it, to coax it into bloom. It can be done — I saw the fruits of it today. But having walked a few feet in the shoes of those who do it, I would rather not walk that way very often.