The Sundarbans is the world's largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, shared between Bangladesh and India. A boat trip through the delta channels — past kingfishers, estuarine crocodiles, spotted deer, and, if you are lucky, a glimpse of a Royal Bengal Tiger on the bank — is one of the great wildlife experiences in Asia. Tours depart from Khulna, typically lasting two to four days.
Puran Dhaka (Old Dhaka) is where the city's Mughal past is still visible. The Lalbagh Fort (17th century, never completed), the Ahsan Manzil (the pink palace of the Nawabs, now a museum), and the Dhakeshwari Temple are all within walking distance of each other. The lanes of the old city — rickshaws, spice markets, the smell of biryani from decades-old restaurants — are as atmospheric as anything in South Asia.
Cox's Bazar is a beach that just keeps going. At 120 kilometers, it is one of the longest unbroken natural beaches in the world, and outside Bangladeshi national holidays it is surprisingly uncrowded. The town itself is chaotic, but the beach north toward Inani is beautiful: golden sand, fishing boats, forested hills behind.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts — the hill country around Bandarban, Rangamati, and Khagrachhari — is Bangladesh's other country. Forested ridges, indigenous Buddhist villages, Kaptai Lake, and the remote high country near the Myanmar border are all here. A permit is required for some areas. The trekking is real: rough paths, basic guesthouses, and an almost complete absence of other tourists.
Sylhet and the tea estates in the northeast offer a different kind of landscape: rolling green hills covered in tea bushes, rivers flowing down from the Khasi hills of Meghalaya, and dense jungle at Lawachara National Park where hoolock gibbons call from the canopy. Ratargul Swamp Forest — Bangladesh's only freshwater swamp forest — is accessible by small boat during the wet season.
The ancient ruins at Paharpur (accessible from Rajshahi or Bogra) are the remains of the Somapura Mahavihara, a vast 9th-century Buddhist monastery that was one of the most important Buddhist centers in Asia. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, and far quieter than it deserves to be.