Dhaka Is Still Sold as a Layover, and Its 400-Year-Old River Quarter Deserves Longer

Dhaka rarely gets treated as a destination in its own right. Most travellers pass through Hazrat Shahjalal International on the way to the beaches of Cox's Bazar or the mangroves of the Sundarbans, and the city's own case for a longer stop tends to go unmade. That case starts in Old Dhaka, the four-century-old core of the city founded as a Mughal provincial capital in 1608, where narrow lanes, colonial-era trading houses and one of the busiest river waterfronts in South Asia sit within a single afternoon's walk of each other.

A palace built on river trade

Ahsan Manzil, known as the Pink Palace, was built on the banks of the Buriganga River by the Nawab of Dhaka between 1859 and 1872, and now operates as a museum run by the Bangladesh National Museum. Its domed central hall and riverside setting reflect a city whose wealth, for centuries, ran on the water in front of it rather than the roads around it, a fact easy to miss amid the traffic of modern Dhaka.

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A waterfront that never really stops

The Buriganga remains one of the most heavily trafficked stretches of river in the region, worked by wooden country boats, small ferries and cargo lighters moving goods in and out of the old city's ghats. A short hired-boat ride along the waterfront, taken in the early morning before the heat and the crowds build, shows a working river economy that has changed surprisingly little in character even as the city around it has grown into one of the world's most populous.

Layers most transit passengers never see

Within walking distance of the river, Old Dhaka packs in Lalbagh Fort, an unfinished 17th-century Mughal fortress; the Star Mosque, its facade covered in Chinese porcelain fragments and star-motif mosaics; and Shakhari Bazar, a single lane of conch-shell artisans whose trade has continued in the same buildings for generations. None of this is hard to reach. It is simply skipped by an itinerary built around getting somewhere else.

A day trip that argues for itself

An hour or so outside the city, Sonargaon, one of Bengal's former regional capitals, adds the ruined merchant houses of Panam Nagar and a folk art museum to a case that Dhaka's surroundings reward slower travel rather than a same-day exit. Treated as a stopover, the city gives up little of this. Treated as a stop, it gives up a fair amount.

Traveller tips

• Old Dhaka is best covered on foot or by cycle-rickshaw; the lanes around Shakhari Bazar and Lalbagh Fort are too narrow and congested for cars.
• Ahsan Manzil is closed on some weekdays and public holidays; check current opening days before visiting.
• Early morning is the most comfortable time to visit the Buriganga waterfront, both for light and to avoid the day's heaviest heat and boat traffic.
• Sonargaon and Panam Nagar can be combined with Old Dhaka in a single long day, but a separate half-day trip allows more time at each site.