Things to do in Gazipur

Nature · Rajendrapur, on the Dhaka–Mymensingh highway

A remnant of the sal forest that once covered this whole tract, managed as a national park since 1974 and formally declared under the Wildlife Act in 1982.

Local tip: Go on a weekday morning — at weekends it fills with picnic parties from Dhaka and the point of the place evaporates. The interior paths away from the entrance are where you actually see the forest.

Culture · Pirujali village, north of Gazipur town

The country estate the novelist and filmmaker Humayun Ahmed built from 1997 — a garden of hundreds of tree species, sculptures and ponds, now his resting place.

Local tip: It means far more if you have read anything of his first, and everyone Bangladeshi you meet will have. Go early and take a guide from the village; the trees are labelled and the stories behind several of them are the reason people come.

Nature · Baromchara, Sreepur upazila

A large drive-through and walk-through wildlife park laid out across roughly 3,810 acres of sal forest, opened in 2013 and among the largest in Asia.

Local tip: The core safari section is done by bus and is the part worth doing; the rest can be skipped. Weekdays only if you want to see anything — this is one of the most popular weekend destinations for the whole Dhaka metropolitan area.

Landmark · Joydebpur, central Gazipur

The zamindari palace of the Bhawal estate, now government offices, and the setting of the Bhawal case — a decades-long lawsuit over whether a returning ascetic was the estate's presumed-dead heir.

Local tip: The building is used by the administration so access is partial, but the exterior and the story are the draw. The Bhawal sannyasi case is one of the strangest legal sagas in South Asian history and is worth reading before you visit.

Neighborhood · Tongi, Zone 1 of Gazipur City Corporation

The industrial southern end of the city on the river opposite Dhaka — factories, the rail junction, the bridge, and the vast open ground where the Bishwa Ijtema is held.

Local tip: Walk the Ijtema ground out of season and the scale is hard to believe: a bare riverside field that holds millions of people for a few days each year and then empties completely. It is the most striking thing in the district and almost nobody visits it when it is empty.

Food · Chandana Chowrasta, on the Dhaka–Mymensingh highway

The junction that functions as the city's centre — highway restaurants, tea stalls and the late-night food that a shift-working industrial city needs.

Local tip: Go after the evening shift change, when the strip is at its busiest and the food is freshest. It is not a refined eating scene and that is the point; it is the honest social centre of a factory city.