"A city of contrasts" Top 5 Page for this destination Dhaka by Rupanworld

Dhaka is the capital city of Bangladesh and largest of all cities in the country. It is also the political, cultural and commercial capital of Bangladesh. It has a highly developed urban infrastructure, but at the same time, it is famous as the rickshaw capital of the world. There are about 400,000 rickshaws running on the streets, causing a lot of problem to the traffic. Dhaka, is faced with problems of congestion as people from all over the country flock into the city in search of livelihood. Dhaka is located in central Bangladesh on the eastern banks of the Buriganga River.

courtesy wikipedia

One thing that attracts me to Dhaka always is the city's Bengali population. However, the city is composed of people from every region of Bangladesh. The people originally hailing from Dhaka are known as Dhakaia and have a distinctive dialect and culture. Other communities like Rohingya, Santal, Khasi, Garo, Chakma and Mandi (tribal people) and Chittagonian (hailing from Chittagong) and Sylheti (hailing from Sylhet) also reside in the city. Bengali is the national language. However, a large segment understands English and so there is no problem for tourists.

Bangladesh is predominantly an Islam state although there is a large Hindu, Buddhist and Christian population as well.

Dhaka is has a large middle class population, increasing the market for modern consumer and luxury goods. There are some beautiful and very good shopping malls that have grown up in the city over the past decade. However, when we visited the city in 1990, it was not so developed but yes, the roads were very good even then. However, we had some bad experiences with the traffic and the roads as the time during our visit was an IDD time and we experienced cow slaughter in the neighbourhood, on the roads, everywhere. I remember one day, on our way to Savar, the nmational martyr's monument, we were struck up in a traffic jam for over 2 hours on a small bridge over the Buriganga river just because the huge queue of people willing to sell the hides (skin) of slaughtered cows at the nearby market had intersected the road that we were passing by.

• Pros:Very beautiful city, good roads, great buildings
• Cons:Rickshaws, rickshaws and rickshaws
• In a nutshell:A city of contrasts