---
type: Video
title: "I Survived 24 Hours in Dhaka, Bangladesh with No Money 🇧🇩"
description: The no-money challenge with a twist — everyone who helps Harry gets 10,000 taka afterwards — and the first man to buy him lunch refuses the money outright.
tags: [bangladesh, dhaka, challenge, hospitality, giving-back, gulshan]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znFaw0GnSRw
video_id: znFaw0GnSRw
upload_date: 2023-02-16
duration: 1091
---

# I Survived 24 Hours in Dhaka, Bangladesh with No Money 🇧🇩

The shortest of Harry's no-money challenges and the one with a twist he
announces at the start: everyone who helps him gets a surprise afterwards. He
carries his wallet the whole time and hands 10,000 taka — roughly $100 — to
each person who feeds him.

The first man he asks buys him a samosa and then refuses the money completely.
Harry's read is that it's pride rather than confusion, and it lands as the
strongest thing in the video: he says on camera that if someone offered him
$100 he would take it.

The other half is unplanned. Children from a poor part of Gulshan ask him for
food, so he pauses the challenge and takes them shopping — and what they pick is
rice, potatoes, flour, salt and milk. He points out that at their age he would
have gone straight for Coke and sweets.

## Key moments

- [00:34] He starts in Gulshan, the modern district, on the theory that it has
  the most English speakers.
- [01:10] A samosa, bought for him by the first person he asks.
- [01:41] The confession: he had his wallet the whole time.
- [02:20] He offers 10,000 taka, about $100, and is turned down flat.
- [03:28] His interpretation — pride, and a lot of it.
- [04:31] Children ask him for food. He pauses the challenge.
- [06:15] They steer him past the restaurants he offers and toward a grocery
  shop instead.
- [07:21] What they choose: rice, potatoes, flour for bread, salt and milk.
- [08:36] The shop gives him tea for free while he pays.
- [09:18] He notes what told him where they were from — the state of their
  clothes and their feet — without overstating it.
- [09:48] What he expected of Dhaka from the media, against what he found.
- [10:22] The pattern he draws across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: kind,
  hospitable and above all inquisitive, and most of it happens with the camera
  off.
- [10:58] He tries to get a lift and gives up — walking is faster than the
  traffic.
- [12:09] A metro is on the way.
- [12:40] Competing shopkeepers argue over which of them he should eat at.
- [14:29] Mutton pulao, eaten by hand, cooked in bulk with the flavour somehow
  intact.
- [15:47] A chilli finishes him.
- [16:58] The second helper accepts the 10,000.
- [17:30] His first tuk-tuk in Bangladesh, which has a cage on it.

## Extracted pages

- Place: [Dhaka](/places/dhaka.md)
- Country: [Bangladesh](/countries/bangladesh.md)
- Tips: [Reward honesty and hard work](/tips/reward-honesty-and-hard-work.md),
  [Insist on paying](/tips/insist-on-paying.md),
  [Judge a place for yourself](/tips/judge-a-place-for-yourself.md)