In this fascinating conversation, Jafar Tuhin, founder of Taabu Tour and Tabbu Ekduaria Village Homestay, shares his journey from city life to pioneering sustainable village tourism in Bangladesh. Tuhin's journey is a compelling story of following one's passion, embracing slow living, and creating meaningful experiences for travelers.
What you will learn:
Tuhin offers valuable insights for travel enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in sustainable development or alternative lifestyles. He challenges conventional notions of success and progress, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with nature, community, and personal fulfillment. Enjoy!
Future Startup: Please tell us about yourself and your background leading to what you are doing now.
Jafar Tuhin: I was born in Ekduaria Village. I spent my first year of life there. Ekduaria, being a remote village, didn't have a good school. To offer us better schooling, my father moved the family to Shibpur, a semi-urban city near our village. I did my SSC there. After completing my Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) in 2005, I moved to Dhaka to pursue an Honors degree in Mathematics at Govt. Titumir College. My time in Dhaka was filled with diverse experiences.
I developed a deep passion for travel at a young age, a realization that fully dawned on me in class 8, although I believe the inclination existed even earlier. During my eighth-grade year, I pleaded with and convinced my father to buy me a bicycle, promising to use it for school. Cycling to school was a common phenomenon and every kid wanted one.
My father imposed a condition: if I achieved the first position in class, he would fulfill my request. Determined to meet this goal, I worked extra hard, and when I secured the top spot, my father rewarded me with a bicycle. This marked the beginning of my school escapades. I attended a few classes, skipped the rest, and explored various places with my bicycle, covering significant distances, the distance you can cover with a Phoenix cycle.
When I finally went to Dhaka, one of my cousins and I started a travel group called Nishidal (Night Group). We sleep 365 nights of the year. Some people stay awake at night. Many shades of life happen at night —good things happen, bad things happen, and many things happen. We thought we would sleep 29 nights every month and spend one night on the road traveling around Bangladesh and observing the night lives of people in cities and villages. That was the origin of Nishidal. We used to travel one night every month. We traveled to every district of Bangladesh as a group.
I also traveled all over Bangladesh personally. Still, there are places I've not been to, and am traveling to these places.
My journey in the tourism business originates from my passion for travel. I have been fascinated by travel from a young age, and if you can turn your passion into a profession, there is nothing better than that. If someone who loves football can earn a living from playing football, it is the best thing for him. I thought if I could earn my living from tourism, that would be the best profession for me. I always had a passion for working in the sector.
When I was in Dhaka, I had many foreign tourists who would come and stay in my house. I used to help them with information to travel around. When I was in Titumir College, I used to work as a waiter at Pizza Hut. It was the only international restaurant and it had only one branch in Gulshan. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of expats and foreigners, both travelers as well as people living in Bangladesh for various reasons, who used to frequent the restaurant. Many of these people would ask for different things such as going to some place or doing some things, etc. I used to help them. Doing that, I thought if I could build a platform for this, I could help more people.
Many people come to Bangladesh to travel and need help with information and logistics. I didn't have any idea before that people come to Bangladesh to travel. I was not aware of the tourism industry. I never worked with any company in the tourism business. So I didn't have much idea about this industry. But I had this idea that many people look for information but there is a lack of proper information, as a result, people face challenges when it comes to traveling to different places.
From this realization, I started Taabu Tour in 2013 and registered as a tour operator in 2016. Initially, the response was quite slow. We had to struggle for a long time. Gradually, it started to pick up. We now have a decent operation.
Bangladesh is not a tourism destination. We all know that when people think about South Asia for travel, the first thing they think about is India; if they want to see mountains they consider Nepal; for escape, they go to Sri Lanka; and for honeymoon, they go to the Maldives. Bangladesh is a skip destination. For regular travelers, Bangladesh is rarely on their to-do list.
This has some positive aspects. The luxury travelers who go to Dubai and such destinations, Bangladesh is not for them. Travelers who come to Bangladesh are very well-traveled. They have probably traveled to 100 countries and are now looking for new destinations where they could go, and they come to Bangladesh as a new destination. The positive side of this is that these are very filtered travelers. They respect the culture. They are not spoiled. Some group travelers are quite loud and negatively impact the culture. But travelers who come to Bangladesh are usually very experienced and they are very respectful, which is very good for our culture. It is very good for sustainable tourism.
Since Bangladesh doesn't attract a lot of travelers, it was a struggle in the early days. However, it has been slowly growing. Our government is also very sincere about tourism. Travelers from most countries get visas on arrival in Bangladesh, which is a very good thing for travelers. I was slowly working on tourism with the Taabu Tour while staying in Dhaka.
I say that life in Dhaka is a consumerism trap. We young people from villages and semi-urban areas from across the country go to these cities for education and then these cities entrap us for life. They offer us a job, more things follow, and we keep running from the village to Dhaka, Dhaka to London to Los Angeles. Our life ends up in a rat race.
I always wanted to avoid this rat race, go back to the village, and lead a slow and peaceful life. Fortunately, my tourism profession allows me to do it from anywhere in the world. Since I have colleagues all over the country, I have travel guides trained by myself in almost all major tourist destinations, they help me the most in organizing the tours. So where I live matters little. I can do my job from anywhere in the world. Despite that, coming out of that trap is a challenge. In our social setting, people don't accept it nicely when someone who lives in cities comes back to the village. Many consider it a failure. When I decided to come back to the village, many of my friends used to tease me that I was going into early retirement. People usually start working at this age, try to go even further, want to improve, and want to go back to the village at this age. This is something that people do in old age. You have grown older at a young age. While now many people envy my slow and peaceful life, that was not the case when I started.
I started my preparation to return to the village in 2015. It took me 5-6 years to make it happen. I finally moved back to my village in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, permanently leaving my house in Dhaka.
I initially wanted to go to some riverside village and build a house, but my mother asked me to come back to our village where we have our land and people know us and everything. Finally, I decided to come back here.
When I returned to Ekduaria, I could finally grasp the beauty of the village. We take so many things for granted in life that we forget to be grateful. We breathe clean air every day and rarely appreciate it. We drink clean water and don't appreciate it. Those of us who live in villages can't feel how beautiful, peaceful, and wonderful village life is. When I finally returned to the village after a long time, I finally came to feel that village life is such a wonderful life. Friendly community, fresh breath, fresh food, everything. We see Switzerland and New Zealand on television and then run after that. This is the trap I mentioned earlier. Our thinking these days is quite controlled either by the media or many other influences. We can't think for ourselves. Our thinking is influenced by a hundred different things. We are made to think in certain ways. The way they want us to think. Our definition of good and bad is defined by someone else and we don't define them.
When I finally returned to the village and realized what a beautiful life it is, I thought that many people want to taste this life, many tourists want to taste this life, but there are not many such options. There are no resources that can help these travelers to travel to villages, stay, and live the village life. People come to Bangladesh and go mostly to mainstream tourist destinations such as Cox's Bazar, Srimangal, Sylhet, etc. Outside of this, there are not many options where these travelers can go to villages and live village life. I thought that this is an excellent opportunity and I can work on this.
Since I'm enjoying this life, I thought foreign tourists would also enjoy this. When I travel to Vietnam and other countries, thousands upon thousands of tourists go to these destinations to only see the rice terrace. Bali is the World's busiest tourist destination. A majority of people who travel to Bali stay in Ubud, which is famous for rice fields. 95% of our land in Bangladesh is plain land and we have endless rice fields. When we travel to Kashmir, we get excited seeing snowfall; when we travel to the Middle East, the desert surprises us. The travelers who come to Bangladesh from Europe and America want to see nature in our country, they want to enjoy endless views of rice fields. These travelers want to enjoy this green and nature. Our people are extremely cordial, friendly, and kind. When they see a foreigner, they invite them to their house. It is rare anywhere in the world. You wouldn't meet these people anywhere in the world. When foreign travelers come to Bangladesh, they are surprised that there are these kinds of friendly people in the world in this age and time. This is quite a surprising matter for most people. When we all are busy with our own lives, people giving time to others is an extraordinary matter to people.
After considering all these things, I thought I could start working on village tourism. I had a spare room in my house at the time. I thought guests could come and stay at my home similar to what guests usually did in my house in Dhaka. If I do a village homestay program here, it sounds good. The response was good. Along with my home, I worked on another house, renovating it so that a family could stay there. My house doesn't have a lot of space and that house is relatively spacious and a family can stay comfortably. I now work on two houses. I want slow and sustainable tourism. I don't want Bangladeshi village tourism to become as popular as busy tourist destinations such as Bangkok or Bali.
The problem with hyper-popularity is that then it becomes a challenge to attract tourists. We have a lot of popular tourist destinations in the country and they have become so popular and thus crowded that many travelers don't want to go there. The culture in those places is kind of lost. You can hardly find local people and local culture. If village tourism gets equally busy and crowded, it won't be sustainable. That's why I want this to grow slowly and sustainably. Of course, I want it to grow but sustainably. We have thousands of villages in Bangladesh. I don't want this to happen in my village alone. I want this to spread all across the country. The Bangladesh government has an initiative for village tourism. Other people are trying. I'm also trying to help others where I can. If we can spread this village tourism across Bangladesh, it would take the pressure off of some of these popular tourist destinations, people will gradually go to travel to villages. Tourism would spread all over the country.
I don't advertise this much. Most people come here through reference. This is how I mainly market this village tourism. We usually have 1-2 groups of tourists in my village monthly and I'm happy with that. COVID was difficult for us. It was difficult for everyone involved in the tourism industry around the world. It has improved over the last two years.
Future Startup: I have a lot of similarities in thinking with you. The idea of a slow and peaceful life. I think you are quite ahead in terms of this slow living. I think there is now a movement around this. When did you first start thinking about this?
Jafar Tuhin: It is hard to say when I first started thinking about this. Thoughts grow slowly. It is not that I had a bad life in Dhaka.
Dhaka life has its side of fascinations. I had a very good life in Dhaka. But people change and people's needs change. Many people prefer city life. I don't have any complaints about Dhaka life. I had a different life there. Now I have a different life in the village. Village life is more peaceful. Dhaka's life is a bit more active.
It is hard to exactly pinpoint when I first started to think about returning to the village, but you could say I started preparing around 2015 to come back to the village. But you can't return to the village as soon as you want. It took me about 5 years to organize everything and then execute it. I finally moved back in 2020.
Future Startup: You have chosen quite an unconventional profession. You have been passionate about travel from a young age. You traveled in your youth. And you chose to become an entrepreneur in the space which must have required unusual courage. If we go back to your childhood, was there anything in your environment that influenced you and how you turned out as an individual?
Jafar Tuhin: My father was a school teacher. He had some business on the side. My mother was a homemaker and she was a designer on the side. Like all parents, my parents didn't want anything different for me. They wanted a stable life for their children. That their kids would study, work, and have a good life. My parents also wanted the same for me and my siblings.
When I was in Dhaka, I tried many different things. As I said, I worked in a restaurant when in college, and later I started a restaurant business as well in Dhaka. I also had a small textile industry in Dhaka. My father did not earn a lot of money. We always had financial difficulties. I never could use the savings of our parents. When I first went to Dhaka, I always tried to earn my living. I did tuition and other things. I did some work here and there and I tried to stand on my own feet. I never wanted to put pressure on my family.
When I started my first restaurant, my parents were very happy. When I started my textile industry, they were very happy. But when I started working on tourism, which is really not an industry in Bangladesh and it is hard to convince anyone about it, my parents started to worry that this one of their kids has always been a little vagabond type and if he is doing this new thing then it would be difficult for him to have a good life. Despite that, they never forced me to do anything. They gave me good advice and tried to steer me in the direction that would be good for me.
I tried to convince them and they tried to do the same. Through this process, I have tried to do my thing and follow my passion. In the early days when there was not much response, they would get demotivated that there was not a proper environment in Bangladesh for the work I was doing. Tourism is good in many other countries but not in Bangladesh.
After hearing these things, I would get even more motivated to work in the field that we need to work in because things are not good here. My father passed away. I have my mother and she is very happy with my work now. Even my friends, as I told you, now feel jealous that I live such a slow and peaceful life.
Initially, many people didn't really understand whether I would be able to do something in the field of tourism and how my life would be once I came back to the village, now they understand and can see my logic.
As you mentioned, many people have similar aspirations and there is growing aspiration in people for a slow and peaceful life. Life is not only about spending it in the race of consumerism. We all need personal life and should spend time with ourselves. We all are spending time running after work and more work. Many people realize that we need to live a slower life but it is not easy to execute.
The kind of environment we are living in today is antagonistic to our desire for a slow life. The change will not happen any time soon and it will not be easy to establish it. I had to face many similar challenges. I would also say that my parents have been immensely supportive. However, I wouldn't say they were of a very different mindset. They are very simple-minded people. They are like ten other parents who want good for their kids. But they never forced me or created obstacles for me. All these things have helped me to live my life.
Future Startup: You are a long-time traveler. You traveled extensively when you were at college. You said you had a group called Nishidal. Does Nishidal exist to this day?
Jafar Tuhin: The group continues to exist. We did many highly adventurous trips. We spent the whole night traveling via truck. We put tents in Gurustan and Shoshan because those are relatively less crowded places.
Bangladeshi people are very inviting. If you come and put a tent in my village, people will invite you and take you to their homes. This happens in every village. We wanted to avoid that, and Gurustan and Shoshan are places where people usually don't go and you can stay safely and people wouldn't forcefully take you with them.
We did many adventurous trips. On many of those trips, we had some foreign tourists with us in those days. We still have that group. However, as you grow older, you get busier. Life brings you many responsibilities. So we can't routinely go on tours but we try to do some tours occasionally. Nishidal is there and insha'Allah, it will remain active always.
Future Startup: I have observed another pattern in your thought that you are more in favor of slow and sustainable growth of tourism. This is quite counter-cultural, I would say, given that people generally seek faster growth in any business.
Jafar Tuhin: I'm of course earning my living through this. However, when we become overtly commercial, we fail to be professional. If we want to stay professional, we have to maintain a balance between commercial and professional. I try to maintain this balance. If we only focus on making money, then I have to sacrifice my passion.
When I trekked Annapurna in Nepal, I rarely met local people while there were a large number of tourists. These are destinations where there are thousands of tourists. But I went there to see the local people.
I stayed almost a month in Bali and I rarely came in touch with locals in urban locations. I went to remote villages and met local people but in cities and urban areas, it is mostly tourists. The culture of these places is spoiled. They can't offer any local culture. It made me a little sad. If I travel to a place and get a taste of the global environment and don't get a taste of any local environment, then it doesn't really complete my travel. I can find the taste of the global environment in any major city in the world such as Singapore, New York, or London.
When a tourist comes to Bangladesh, they want to get a taste of Bangladesh. If we have people coming as if a flood gate has been opened, it would affect our culture negatively. Look at our neighboring country Bhutan, they are a tourism-dependent economy. They rely on tourism as an economy. They don't have much agriculture and other industries. However, they didn't open tourism like Bali or some other destinations. Many people can't travel to Bhutan because there is a government fee that you have to pay to travel to Bhutan. People who can afford the fee only then can travel to Bhutan. This is one of the policies of Bhutan to encourage sustainable tourism. They quite openly say that they want to preserve their culture and that they don't want a large number of tourists. They want filtered travelers.
We have the largest mangrove forest in the world. We have one of the largest sea beaches in the world. However, the most interesting thing about Bangladesh is its people. Our people are so friendly that it is hard to see anywhere in the world. Despite having so many resources, we don't attract a lot of travelers because we don't have many campaigns going on around the world. We have to let people know what we have.
People know what India has to offer such as the Taj Mahal and people go to India to see the Taj Mahal. We have to let people know what we have. If we let people know and if we don't completely open tourism like Bali or Bangkok, if we try to grow it sustainably, our tourism can become a strong force for our economy.
The small island country of Maldives earns a significant percentage of their GDP simply by selling honeymoons. People don't go for any other travel to Maldives. In Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, and India, in all of our neighboring countries, tourism is one of the biggest industries. Despite having many resources for tourism, it is not a meaningful large industry in Bangladesh. It is in fact not among industries in Bangladesh.
I think if we invest a little bit in promoting Bangladeshi tourism around the world if the industry insiders work a little harder, we could become a formidable destination in the world. And I want that we grow slowly and sustainably and it doesn't become too commercial.
Future Startup: The name of the village is very fascinating-Ekduaria. How old is the village? What is the origin of the name?
Jafar Tuhin: The age of the village would be over 100 years. Since this was lowland haor (a marsh wetland ecosystem), so it was called doria (river), it used to look like one doria (one river), but from there it changed and became Ekduaria.
Future Startup: You returned to the village in 2020. You didn't start working on the village homestay yet.
Jafar Tuhin: No. After coming back, I built a house for ourselves. I first started the village homestay after COVID-19 in mid-2022 in July. That's when we started.
Future Startup: Could you talk about the early days of Ekduaria Village Homestay?
Jafar Tuhin: In July 2022, we had a family from New Zealand who were traveling to Bangladesh with us in various places such as Dhaka, Barisal, etc. They had about a week of spare days at hand. One day they asked me whether they could go to a village in Kushtia. I told them I would inquire and let them know. They wanted to go there and stay one or two nights. I contacted the person and he told me that they don't have a set-up for hosting foreign tourists. People can visit and see but they can't arrange a stay. I informed the tourist that there was no facility to stay. That they could go, see around, and have to return in the evening. They were like if we go spending 4-5 hours on the road and have to come back at the end of the day, it does not make sense. If we could stay, then we would go.
I asked them why they wanted to go to that village. They said that they wanted to see the rural life of Bangladesh and that they found that village on YouTube, so they wanted to go there.
The next day when we had our tour, I told them that I again contacted the person in the village but they couldn't arrange a stay. I told them if they want they can visit my village and stay there. They came and stayed for five days. After five days when they were leaving, all of them, they had two kids, were crying and hugging the village people as if they didn't want to go. They have been in touch with us ever since. Anywhere they meet Bangladeshi or go to a Bangladeshi restaurant, they send me photos on my WhatsApp. They perhaps would return to Bangladesh. They told me they would return to Bangladesh in 2024.
People who travel, there are some 193 countries in the world, can rarely go back to the same country twice or thrice. It is very difficult to return twice to a single country. It is very interesting that some of our guests are promising to return to Bangladesh again.
And I have guests who came to Bangladesh only to see Ekduaria. That has happened. I feel very proud of this. People visit India to see the Taj Mahal, and Egypt to see the Pyramids, and I feel extremely proud that some people are coming to Bangladesh to see Ekduaria and that people are coming from another country to Bangladesh to see a village.
Future Startup: Give us an overview of the operation.
Jafar Tuhin: We mention specifically that for tourists who come to our village, we don't arrange any special event for them, don't prepare any special food, we don't do anything special for them. They enjoy the regular daily life of a village in Bangladesh. If we are irrigating land, or planting paddy, they will do the same with us. If women are making Pitha (a kind of food), they can do that with them. We milk cows in the morning, they can do it with us in the morning. They cook on the soil stove. The life we live every day in our village, they live that exact life. They live the regular village life. We don't do anything special for them.
Future Startup: How big is your team now?
Jafar Tuhin: We have 3 travel guides along with me who help our tourists in my absence. That's the only special thing that we do for our tourists. We have a language barrier. Most people who come here don't understand Bangla, so they need an English-speaking guide. We have 3 more English-speaking guides in the village who help them.
We are currently doing it only in our village. There are some village homestays. There is one in Paharpur near the Buddha Mandir. There is another village homestay in Barisal.
Future Startup: You mentioned that people are mainly coming through references and recommendations. Apart from that, do you do anything else regarding marketing and communication?
Jafar Tuhin: We haven't done any paid marketing till now. We believe word of mouth is the best marketing. People hear from each other and they come here. People who have visited our village so far directly communicate with us on WhatsApp. People usually learn from each other and communicate with us.
When people come to a travel destination like Bangladesh they usually ask other travelers who visited the same destination before. So when you serve one guest well, they usually refer you to others.
Future Startup: What are your future plans?
Jafar Tuhin: I want village tourism to spread throughout Bangladesh. There has been some discussion about village tourism in recent years and many people are interested in doing this. People who reach out to me, I try to help them as much as I can. If this spreads throughout the country, I believe this wouldn't get spoiled. Many of our popular tourist destinations are in bad shape because of excess tourism. I think if this spreads outside Ekduaria, it will be wonderful. We had discussions with the Tourism Board, they are also working on rural tourism and they have several initiatives across the country. If the government and other people take the initiative, I think this has excellent potential.
Future Startup: What has been the impact on Ekduaria?
Jafar Tuhin: People in my village are very happy and excited to see foreign tourists. It is very rare and people are usually very inviting. People usually give time to them, teach, and share things. I'm trying to spread it to a few more villages around us along with my village. We're now working with some of these villages.
Future Startup: What lessons have you learned?
Jafar Tuhin: I was telling you at the beginning of the conversation that we have so many things, we enjoy so many blessings and consume so many things and do that so easily that we never think about it. We rarely feel the blessings we have. We rarely contemplate whether we deserve so many things. We pollute the air every day while we live on oxygen. We pollute rivers daily while we drink and feel entitled to clean water. We are not entitled to this but we are given. Every day, we receive so many blessings yet we have new needs and desires and we want more.
We rarely pay attention to the destruction we cause to nature every day. We rarely think about whether we are deserving of all these blessings and that we should try to become more deserving. Rather we always think about why we shouldn't get more.
Why is nature being so kind or those of us who believe in God, do we think why is God being so generous whereas I'm not grateful for anything? Instead, I pollute the river and do bad and harmful things, whereas I get good things every day.
If we can feel this, Bangladeshis are already happy people, we would be even happier, and we would be able to live a better life. This is an important lesson for all of us. If all of us acknowledge the blessings we are given daily and are grateful for them, our lives will become even more beautiful.
Future Startup: What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a village tourism project?
Jafar Tuhin: They should first start with building an online presence. You can do this through social media, a Google page, or a website. The next step is reaching out to people. You can do it through SEO, writing online regularly, and social media marketing. You should aim to reach people who are interested in rural travel and Bangladesh. We need a meaningful study regarding this. Many people want to start this but can't because they don't know how and where to start. It would be useful to have such training from relevant authorities. People should try to learn for themselves. There are endless sources of knowledge online and people should pursue them.
Finally, this is a long-term thing. You have to commit for the long run. There will be challenges and ups and downs, so one has to be ready. When we started, it took us a long time to get where we are today. Initially, it was a lot of challenges. But once we started to get some attention, it eventually became consistent. People should have long-term preparation when they embark on this journey. If you stay long-term and persist, you should succeed over time.
Cover photo credit: Sajeeb Mia
