India-Bangladesh: The world's craziest border

Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans

The 1947 partition of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan created artificial borders that are still hotly disputed today. In Bengal, the zigzagging border with East Pakistan (and from 1971, Bangladesh) was dotted with enclaves—little islands of one country surrounded by the territory of the other. In total, there were 162 chitmahals, ranging in size from ten square miles to less than an acre. For more than half a century, their residents were essentially stateless, unable to legally travel within their own country and lacking schools, health services, electricity, police and courts. Even after a historic land swap agreement in 2015 straightened out the border, most people stayed where they were; they did not want to abandon the land their families had farmed for generations.