I visited Bangladesh with work. I didn’t know much about the country before going there, so I was looking forward to learning more.

DHAKA

Dhaka, the capital city, has the craziest traffic I’ve ever seen. You can stay hours stuck in the same place, among rickshaws, crowded buses, and even elephants!

The city is completely overcrowded, a sea of people wherever you look. People-watching (and being watched) was great fun though.

Bangladesh doesn’t have many tourist attractions, but I visited a few local highlights in Dhaka: the Pink Palace (Ahsan Manzil) and the Lalbagh Fort. Both were nice, but not remarkable.

THE COUNTRYSIDE

I visited Habiganj, a district in the north-east of the country. Although it’s a remote area, there are people everywhere you look: Bangladesh is quite a small country, but 170 million people live there.

Travelling through the Bangladeshi countryside I saw a completely different area of the country: rice and tea plantations, and local communities whose lives revolve around the local rivers, which they use to fish, to bathe, for transportation, for leisure…

It is a beautiful country, and people there were absolutely amazing, but it was also quite harsh. I’m really happy I got the opportunity to visit Bangladesh, as it’s not a destination that I would have chosen otherwise.

LEARN MORE

A Golden Age is a great book to learn about the recent history of Bangladesh. It is the first part of a trilogy, and it’s set around the country’s independence in 1971.