Eid fervour is already in the air and hordes of holidaymakers are now heading home across Bangladesh to celebrate the festival with their kinspersons.
With government offices closed after Thursday's work for a longer vacation, the pressure of holidaymakers on roads, rails and waterways continued rising as the exodus started Friday.
But sun-scorching hot weather coupled with slow movement of vehicles because of extreme pressure of the transports on the highways turned their joyful journey into a travel of sufferings.
From the early morning, people bag and baggage were seen moving towards bus terminals, rail-stations and launch terminals to leave the busy capital to spend the eid holiday with their dear and near ones.
Failing to get into buses, trains or launches, many people were found departing from Dhaka by microbus, pickup and even lorries from the exit points of the capital at much higher fares.
The trains leaving Dhaka were full to the brim as standing passengers crammed into every empty corner in the mad rush to their homes ahead of the largest religious festival for Muslims.
All trains, bar Nilsagor Express, Sundarban Express and Rangpur Express, whistled off the station on time. Every train was packed to the brim with vacationers, with thousands of standing passengers, and many of them were travelling without a ticket.
Some 53,000 passengers will leave Dhaka by train every day ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr, according to Bangladesh Railway.
Apart from a 13-kilometre-long traffic congestion between Bypile and Chandra-seen as a bottleneck--a bridge at Hatikumrul in Ullahpara of Sirajganj turned into the main suffering hub for the north-and northwest-bound passengers on Friday as the exodus got into full gear ahead of the Eid holiday.
The traffic congestion on the road continued till 8:00 pm, the time of filing of the report, according to highway police sources.
Zaber Hasan, a bus driver, told the FE that there was no jam in Tangail-Bangabandhu Bridge area last night but he got caught in congestion just after crossing the Bangabandhu Bridge on Friday morning.
He said the congestion was sourced mainly at the Hatikumrul Bridge at Ullahpara-another bottleneck to the long-haul travel.
Md Lutfar Rahman, officer-in-charge of Hatikumrul Highway Police Station, said there is a problem on the 25-km road from Bangabandhu Bridge West to Hatikumrul due to ongoing renovation work.
"But vehicular movement started through one lane of the newly constructed bridge in Nalka area," he said.
He said roads were widened at many places on the highway ahead of the Eid but still there is some problem due to the extra pressure of vehicles.
However, as usual, the Bypile-Chandra section of the north-bound highway witnessed a much slower movement of vehicles as it took four to five hours just to cross the 13-kilomitre road by bus.
Jamal Sarder, a driver of Hanif Paribahan, told the FE at Mirzapur Highway in Tangail that it took four and a half hours to reach Kaliakoir from Bypile.
The situation was almost same at Sadarghat Launch Terminal which was flooded by passengers who planned to travel home in southern coastal districts.
The rush of people was too packed as it takes less than 30 minutes to overcrowd a vessel. As a result, some of the launches were found departing from the terminal much earlier than the schedule.
Sohel Rana, who leaves the terminal for Barguna district to celebrate the festival, said he finally managed to reach the vessel overcoming the huge crowd.
"And the launch started the journey before the schedule as it is full of passengers," he adds.
However, there were many passengers who failed to get into their targeted launch because of the huge crowd and waited for long to board the next one.
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