Bangladesh Tourism Board
Beautiful Bangladesh
You can be in mangrove forest at breakfast and hill country by dinner. Bangladesh is roughly the size of England with the geography of four different countries stacked on top of each other.
Everything below is reachable on public transport or a short internal flight. Distances look small and take longer than you think, so plan two or three regions per trip rather than all of them.
Khulna Division
The largest mangrove forest on earth, about 10,000 square kilometres of it, and the only mangrove in the world that holds tigers. You travel by boat because there is no other way in. Kotka, Hiron Point, Karamjal. Deer, crocodiles, kingfishers, and if you are lucky, pugmarks in the mud at low tide.
Chattogram Division
About 120 kilometres of unbroken sand, the longest natural sea beach in the world. Laboni for the crowds, Himchari for the cliffs and waterfall, Inani for the boulder fields, and Teknaf at the far end where the country runs out. Sunset here is a public event.
Sylhet Division
Tea country. Around 150 gardens, most of them planted in the 1850s, plus Lawachara rainforest with its hoolock gibbons. North of the city the rivers come off the Meghalaya hills so clear you can count the stones: Bisnakandi, Jaflong, Lalakhal. Ratargul, the freshwater swamp forest, is an hour away.
Chattogram Division
The only genuinely mountainous part of Bangladesh, and the most culturally distinct. Rangamati sits on Kaptai Lake, Bandarban has the highest peaks and the Nafakhum falls, and Sajek wakes up above a valley full of cloud. Eleven indigenous communities live here, each with its own language. Some areas need a permit, so check before you book.
Dhaka Division
The Mughal river port the rest of the city grew out of. Ahsan Manzil in pink, the unfinished Lalbagh Fort, Star Mosque set with broken china, Shakhari Bazar's shophouses, and Sadarghat where a thousand launches leave every evening. Come hungry.
Khulna Division
A fifteenth century city built by Khan Jahan Ali in the middle of the mangrove belt, then abandoned and swallowed by forest. UNESCO World Heritage. The Shait Gumbad Mosque is the centrepiece: officially sixty domes, actually seventy seven, on sixty pillars.
Rajshahi Division
Somapura Mahavihara, built in the eighth century and once the largest Buddhist monastery south of the Himalayas. A single cross shaped temple in the middle of 177 monk cells. UNESCO World Heritage. Go in winter, early, when the fog is still sitting on it.
Sylhet Division
A Ramsar wetland on the Meghalaya border. In the monsoon it becomes an inland sea and you sleep on the boat. In winter it drains into a mosaic of reed beds and shallow lakes that holds over 200 species of bird. The hijal and karach trees standing in water are the picture everyone comes for.
Barishal Division
An 18 kilometre beach on the southern tip of the country, and one of very few places on earth where you can watch both sunrise and sunset over the same water. The Rakhine villages behind the beach have their own Buddhist temples and their own kitchen.
Chattogram Division
The country's only coral island, eight square kilometres, three hours by boat from Teknaf. No cars. Visitor numbers and overnight stays are now capped to let the reef recover, so book early and check the current rules before you travel.
Dhaka Division
The medieval capital of Bengal, an hour from Dhaka. Panam City is a single street of abandoned merchant mansions from the 1890s, built on the muslin trade and left standing empty. The folk art museum next door is the best collection of Bangladeshi craft anywhere.
Rangpur Division
An eighteenth century temple near Dinajpur covered, every surface of it, in terracotta plaques. Ramayana scenes, hunting parties, steam trains, women at their toilet. Fifteen thousand panels. Bring a zoom lens and an hour.
Rajshahi Division
The largest cluster of old Hindu temples in the country, laid out around a palace and a tank in a small town near Rajshahi. Govinda Temple carries the best terracotta work. Easy half day from Rajshahi city.
Barishal Division
Canal country. The floating guava market at Bhimruli runs from July to September, boats stacked with fruit on a channel eight metres wide. The overnight Rocket paddle steamer from Dhaka has been doing this run since the 1920s.
Chattogram Division
A town spread across islands in Kaptai Lake, the largest artificial lake in the country. Hire a boat for the day, cross to the hanging bridge, visit the Chakma royal palace, and eat bamboo cooked chicken by the water.
Sylhet Division
Semi evergreen rainforest outside Srimangal, and the best chance in the country of seeing a hoolock gibbon, which is Bangladesh's only ape. Go at first light. A train line runs straight through the middle of it.
Rajshahi Division
The oldest known city in Bangladesh, occupied from around the third century BCE. What survives is a rampart the size of a small town, a museum with the Brahmi inscription that dates the place, and a lot of open field.
Chattogram Division
The country's biggest waterfall by volume, reached on foot along the Remakri river from Thanchi with a local guide. Two days there and back if you are fit. Permits and a registered guide are required.
Sylhet Division
The only freshwater swamp forest in Bangladesh. For four months of the year it stands in twenty to thirty feet of water and you row through the canopy. Out of season you can walk it. Go early, take the smallest boat, keep quiet.
Sylhet Division
Where the Piyain river comes down out of Meghalaya over a bed of white stones, with the Indian hills right there behind it. Busy at weekends, quiet on a Tuesday morning, and best right after the rains.
Dhaka Division
Fifty two houses on one straight street, built by Hindu cloth merchants between 1890 and 1910 and empty since Partition. Ferns growing out of the cornices. One of the most photographed streets in the country and still oddly quiet.
Chattogram Division
Where the Padma and the Meghna meet, and the self declared hilsa capital of Bangladesh. Take the morning launch from Dhaka, eat the fish within sight of where it was landed, and come back at night.
