This is not a work post, except that it completely is. In June we closed the laptops, took the 2pm train out of Dhaka, and spent five days in Sylhet — all fifteen of us. Video editors, social media managers, graphic designers, the production team, our admin, me.
Why I take the whole team
Design and editing are creative work, and creative work is a particular kind of stressful. You can push through months of deadlines on adrenaline, but the quality of what a team makes eventually reflects the state the team is in. So every so often I plan a trip for all of us — not a reward for one person, everyone. It makes the relationships stronger, and some of the most honest conversations about the work happen a long way from the office.
Getting there
The train left Dhaka at 2pm on June 10 and pulled into Sylhet around 9:45 that night. We had a flat booked in Ambarkhana in the city, dropped our bags, and slept. The next morning we headed for Jaintia Hill Resort, up near the Meghalaya border — a place I go whenever the stress gets loud, and the reason I wanted the team to see it.
Jaflong, the waterfall, and a barbecue
Day two was Jaflong and the Mayabi waterfall. If you have never been, Jaflong sits right where the hills of Meghalaya drop into Bangladesh, and the water is the kind of clear that makes everyone quiet for a minute before the phones come out.
That night, back at the resort, we ran a barbecue party — fifteen people around a fire is its own kind of meeting.
Rangpani, and football in the rain
The next morning we went to Rangpani, right on the Indian border. The view there does not feel like anywhere else in the country — the running joke was that we had crossed into Switzerland without a passport. In the evening we stopped at the Naljhuri ground, which turned out to be one of the moments everyone still talks about.
On the way back to the resort the rain started, and instead of waiting it out we did the obvious thing: played football on the resort ground in the middle of it. Fifteen colleagues, one soaked pitch, no positions held for long. If I had to pick one memory from the whole trip, that is it.
That night, after dinner, the whole team sat and talked — about life, about plans, about the work. No agenda, no whiteboard. More got said in two hours than in a month of meetings, which is quietly the entire point of the trip.
Sada Pathor, and the shrine
The last full day we returned to Sylhet city and went out to Sada Pathor, the white stone riverbed at Bholaganj — cold clear water over pale stones, and another place the whole team enjoyed more than any itinerary predicted. We got back after evening, had dinner, and visited the shrine of Hazrat Shahjalal, which you do not leave Sylhet without doing.
At 11pm we boarded the bus back, and reached Dhaka in the early morning — tired in the good way.
What it does for the work
Nothing on this trip was billable, and all of it shows up in the work. A team that has played football in the rain together argues better, hands off files better, and tells each other the truth faster. If you run a creative team and the deadlines have been loud for months, book the train. The work will still be there, and the team that comes back to it will be better.
More on how the team actually runs is in nine years freelancing from Dhaka, or see the about page for the longer story. The work we went back to is the design and automation practice this site describes.
