If Biman had not canceled its flight from Rajshahi to Saidpur I might have missed several treasures of architecture and handicrafts. My original goal was to visit friends in Rangpur, only 45 minutes from the Saidpur airport.

However, when the pilot announced that our flight was not going to a flooded airport and would return to Dhaka instead, I disembarked with my new friends from Mennonite Central Committee. We convinced Biman to take us to the Rajshahi train station for the Inner City train to Saidpur.

Six and a half hours later we arrived at the Saidpur Railroad Station and gratefully spent the night at the Hotel Arafat. For just Tk. 200, this new hotel offered a clean twin-bedded room, cool shower, working fan and relative quiet in the heart of Saidpur.

The next morning, we rickshawed past a phenomenal jewel of a mosque with mosaic tiled walls and minarets irradiated by the morning sunlight. Known as the Chini Mosjid (sugar mosque), this 1863 treasure is only five minutes from the train station.

On the same road is the MCC Action Bag project that employs several hundred women in jute bag production for export. As one cutter declared, "This job has saved my family. We now have a house, my two daughters are going to school in class 3 and 5, and I can provide food when my husband is out of work."

The glowing faces I met were a mosaic of tribal and Bengali artisans whose action bags were as important in their lives as the mosque nearby. When I asked how many of them were able to send their children to school, nearly all these "bag ladies" raised their hands proudly. Needless to say, I purchased several bags!

After my two-day visit to the raj bungalow and circuit house town of Rangpur, we drove back west towards Dinajpur to another architectural wonder: the terracotta masterpiece called Kantajeer Mandir. Admission is free and no crowds lurked within the peaceful walls. With hundreds of small friezes from the great Hindu epics, this Zamindar-financed temple took from 1704-1759 to finish. Most of the intricate three stories of red tiles are marvelously preserved but its nine spires toppled and were destroyed in an 1897 earthquake.