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
• Country: Bangladesh
• Tips: Reward honesty and hard work, Insist on paying, Judge a place for yourself