Dhaka in 48 hours: old city, river and a plan that survives the traffic
Guides · · 2 min read
Dhaka rewards visitors who plan geographically. Distances are short and journeys are long, so the trick is to finish one part of the city before starting another.
Day one: Old Dhaka
Start at Ahsan Manzil, the pink palace on the river, early enough to beat both the heat and the school groups. Walk to Star Mosque for the mosaic work, then Lalbagh Fort in the late afternoon when the light is kind to the brickwork.
Between them, eat. Old Dhaka is the reason to come: biryani, kebabs and sweets within a few streets of each other.
Finish at Sadarghat as the launches leave. The river terminal at dusk is the most alive place in the city.
Day two: the newer city
Dhakeshwari Temple in the morning, then the Liberation War Museum, which explains more about the country in two hours than anything else you will do. In the afternoon, Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban - Louis Kahn's parliament building - seen from the outside across the water.
If you have an evening left, Gulshan and Banani are where the restaurants are.
Moving around
Ride-hailing apps work well and are cheap. A CNG auto-rickshaw is faster in gridlock and requires haggling. Rickshaws are best for short hops inside a neighbourhood. Avoid crossing the city between four and eight in the evening if you can.
A day trip if you have a third day
Sonargaon and Panam Nagar, an hour east, is a street of abandoned merchant houses and the easiest escape from the city.
Two days is enough to see Dhaka properly if you resist the urge to tick off things on opposite sides of the map on the same morning.