Bangladesh-Sightseeing in Dhaka

Bangladesh is a country where the big majority of the people is muslim. You notice this already in the plane with their national airline Bimany Air when they greet you: "We welcome you in the name of Allah (....) the one that shows great mercy (...) when inshallah (if God wants) we arrive in Dhaka(...)"

Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, has much more of a modern city than we expected it. On the first day, we hired a rickshaw that drove us through the new part of town.

We first visited the University of Dhaka, the monument of independance (we later found out that smaller sized of this monument are spread across the whole country, even in schools), Khan Mohammad Midha mosque. 

We also went to the Sree Sree Dhakeswari National Temple (Hindu), before we headed to the incomplete Lalbagh fort (17th century). These huge walls do surrounded a lovely garden with tall trees under which locals, lovers (and tourists) hide for some shadow ( and maybe some intimacy). 

Afer that, we headed to the Bangabandhu Museum, aka Father of the Nation, and visited his house, place where he has been shot in 1975. ( taking pictures was prohibited). 

Our next step led us to the General Assembley building. We were both astounded of its greatly modern archicture- geometric shapes. 

To finish the day, we passed Sad Gumbad Masjid (mosque) as well as Hazrat Hazi Khawja Shhbaz. After this very long day, both of us were exhausted but also quite suprised of the beauty and effort Bengali put in their capital. 

The second day of our Dhaka visit started with the biggest buddhist temple of the country. Honestly, after our stay in Nepal and especially Lumbini, this one couldn't impress us any more, sorry!
Then we went to the lovely Sitara Mosque, all over decorated with stars. We just arrived at praying time, so we could not enter the scene- what a pitty.
The Armenian church was the next step of our schedule and a lovely change from all the mosques and temples we saw in the last weeks.
The pink palace (Ahsan Munjil) was our last stop of the day. It is kind of a strange museum, but more of an old house. It belonged to a rich familiy who contributed a lot in the develeopment of the city. 

Finally, on our way home, we did some shopping (we bought Lungis, pics will follow!!).

On our third day, we wanted to get out of the city and visit the one and a half hour far "jungle-book-like" deserted town of Sonargaon (Panam city). If we got lost in the beginning and ended up in a bengali-handycraft area, we eventually got back on track and found the place we were looking for. It is really impressive how nature slowly takes back what belongs to it...