Top Things to Do in Dhaka

Join a veteran photojournalist before dawn and slip into the vegetable bazaar behind Shankhari Bazar where candle-smoke mingles with marigold dust. Frame boatmen silhouetted against a rose-gold Buriganga, then edit over sweet milk tea in a 200-year-old bakery.

This masterclass keeps groups microscopic so you can stalk a single scene, perhaps a coppersmith rhythmically hammering kalashi pots, until the light turns.

Follow a culinary anthropologist through spice alleys where mounds of panch phoron smell like citrus peel and hay. You'll taste 14 dishes, river-prawn korma smoked in jackfruit wood, jaggery-soaked roshogolla, and a final betel leaf that numbs the tongue like winter mint.

Start atop the 19th-century Pink Palace, glide by rickshaw to the Lalbagh Fort's secret hammam, then catapult into the future at the National Assembly building, Louis Kahn's concrete origami mirrored in surrounding pools.

Begin with a commuter ferry, then duck into the riverside shipyard where 20-metre hulls are hand-riveted by teenagers singing Bollywood hooks. The tour ends with tea in a nearby slum school the operator quietly funds.

Skip the taxi queue. Your English-speaking driver waits with a sign, chilled towels, and a SIM starter pack.

Ride the local bus, pressed tin, neon paint, to Dhaka University, play a round of carrom with students, then weave through New Market bargaining for guava wood combs.

Guides grew up in the neighbourhoods you'll walk; expect spontaneous invitations for borhani yogurt drink at family weddings.

Short on time? This sampler shuttles you from the Armenian Church's moss-coated tombstones to Ahsan Manzil's bubble-gum façade, finishing with lassi in a clay cup you smash after, centuries-old recycling.