Sexagenarian Bangladeshi man spends years living in roadside tree

It looks like a bird's nest from far away, but the truth of the matter is somewhat more remarkable, if not a little bit odd.

Passersby, if they look carefully, will see that it is in fact a man and not a bird dwelling inside the nest in the tree besides a busy footpath in Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka.

Local residents say the man has spent about three years living in the small tree house.

The sexagenarian, who does not talk at all to the local residents including the street vendors under the tree, passes most of the time in the tree house beside a road in front of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association building in Dhaka's commercial Karwan Bazaar area.

Fortunately he decided to talk to a Xinhua correspondent for a while.

"I love nature, I love trees and I have made this tree house," said the man who introduced himself as Mohammad Mosharraf.

He said he has to stay in the tree to take better care of the other trees on the footpath and trees which are set along both sides of the streets of a newly constructed lake called Hatirjheel.

"It's a good place to live," he said while starting to climb the tree.

"Let me live in my tree house. Am I creating any disturbance?" he asked.

He made a bed of bamboo on the tree's branches and covered the entire tiny structure with old cloth, paper and plastic banners collected from Dhaka's streets.

Small wooden wedges have been attached with pins to make it easy to climb into the tree house, which rests on the tree's bigger branches.

Street vendors under the tree and the surrounding area say they don't even know the tree man's name.

"He eats and sleeps in the tree. This is all we know about him, " said a man selling tea on the footpath.

"We don't know much about him because he does not talk to us. But we offer him sometime bread and tea from time to time," the vendor said.

He is something of a mystery to the local folk.

"Though many call him pagla (mad) actually I have never seen him behave abnormally," said the tea seller.

"The man has simply lived on the top of a tree for the last three years."

Locals say the peculiar man stays in his tree house even when its raining or the weather is otherwise inclement.

No amount of coaxing can make him leave his tree house, they said.

Even on rainy days or when cyclones hit, he remains in the tree house, they added.

"Once we told him that we'll give him a nice place to stay, but he refused," said Saddam Hossain, another vendor.

"He said he'd rather take care of the trees."