Things to do in Chattogram

Nature · Patenga, at the mouth of the Karnaphuli

The city's beach, at the point where the river meets the Bay of Bengal, with the ships queueing offshore for the port.

Local tip: Go for the shipping, not the swimming — the water is a working estuary and the appeal is watching the anchorage from the breakwater at dusk. Weekday evenings are far calmer than Fridays, when half the city comes.

Culture · Badshah Mia Road, off Zakir Hossain Road

A Commonwealth War Graves cemetery holding around 731 Second World War burials, immaculately kept on a terraced hillside in the middle of the city.

Local tip: One of the quietest places in Chattogram and almost empty on a weekday morning. The Burma campaign context is what makes it land — this was the rear base for it — so read a little before you go rather than after.

Landmark · Nabab Siraj-ud-Daulah Road, old Chattogram

An 1870 mosque whose multi-domed, many-minaret facade is the most photographed building in the city, built by craftsmen brought from Lucknow and Bombay.

Local tip: The exterior is the point and it is best in late afternoon light. It sits on a busy road in the old town — combine it with a walk through the surrounding lanes rather than treating it as a single stop.

Nature · Khulshi, in the hills north of the centre

A 1924 reservoir created by damming a hill stream, now ringed by wooded slopes with an amusement park attached.

Local tip: Skip the rides and take a boat on the lake instead, or walk the ridge above it. It is the easiest way to understand that Chattogram is a hill city, which no amount of looking at Agrabad will tell you.

Food · Across the city, densest around the old town and Chawkbazar

Beef cooked black and dry with the region's own spice balance, plus the chholar dal and white rice that make up a mezban plate.

Local tip: Kala bhuna is not the same dish as Dhaka's beef bhuna and Chattogram people will tell you so. If a colleague invites you to a family mezban, go — it is a genuine social institution here and the restaurant version is a shadow of it.

Landmark · South of the old town, on the river

The working river frontage — sampans, country boats, ship chandlers and the ferries across to the southern shore, with the container terminals downstream.

Local tip: Take a sampan across the Karnaphuli for a few taka in the late afternoon and look back at the city. Almost no foreign resident of Khulshi ever does it, and it explains Chattogram in fifteen minutes better than any museum.