Our Bangladesh extension will take you to the Sundarbans National Park, where you’ll experience a totally different side of Bangladesh, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. You’ll look for wildlife in the largest mangrove forest in the world, witness the ancient otter fishing technique, sleep in the jungle, visit the UNESCO World Heritage Mosque city of Bagerhat and take the sleeper train back to Dhaka right in time for our Bangladesh, Bhutan & Nepal Tour.

Price: $895 per person

Tuesday 24th June – Dhaka – Narail – Khulna

Morning

• Arrive at your convenience into Dhaka – the capital city of Bangladesh which is well connected from many countries within Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
• Private transportation will pick you up from your hotel in Dhaka and transfer you to Dhaka airport.
• Board a 45-minute domestic flight to Jashore – located in the south-western part of Bangladesh.
• On arrival we’ll make our way to Narail to visit a legit fishermen village and get an insight to a lesser-known Bangladesh. Here you will have first-hand experience with otter fishing, a traditional method of fishing that involves the use of trained otters to assist in catching fish.

Afternoon

• We’ll drive to Khulna, the third largest city in Bangladesh.
• Our visit of Khulna will include the 1971 Genocide-Torture Museum, which details the bloodbath the country witnessed during the Liberation War against Pakistan.
• We’ll also stop at the Gollamari Memorial Monument, built on the spot where Pakistani forces and their local collaborators killed at least 14,00 people during the war.
• Overnight in Khulna

Wednesday 25th June – Khulna – Sundarbans

Morning

• Today we will drive to Mongla, a seaport city not far from the Sundarbans National Park. We’ll embark on a boat there and sail to the national park.
• The Sundarbans is the world’s largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here, we’ll do a cruise on a rowing boat through the canals. We’ll look for monkeys, deer, crocodiles, clawless otters and many different types of birds. Sundarbans is also the home of the Royal Bengal Tiger, a highly endangered species.

Afternoon

• We will visit small villages in the Sundarbans and have fishermen explain their way of living. Now will be the opportunity to learn to fish like a true Bengali!
• Our accommodation for tonight will be an eco-resort built in the mangrove forest, where we will spend the night on wooden houses built on stilts above the water.
• Overnight in Sundarbans National Park

Thursday 26th June – Bagherat – Khulna

Morning

• We will hike the wooden trail of Karamjol. In the dense forest, we hope to see more wildlife: monkeys, deer, foxes, crocodiles, wild boars, reptiles…
• Our next stop will be the Crocodile breeding centre. It was established in Karamjol in 2000 for the purpose of breeding and conservation of the endangered species of saltwater crocodiles, which is the largest reptile in the world.

Afternoon

• We will sail back to Mongla and drive to Bagherat.
• Bagherat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that preserves the surviving monuments of Khalifatabad, a town built in the fifteenth century by the Turkish general Ulugh Khan Jahan. An exceptional number of mosques and early Islamic monuments can be seen there.
• We’ll see a dense amount of Islamic religious monuments and impressive infrastructure (water supply and drainage, cisterns and reservoirs, roads and bridges), revealing a perfect mastery of urban planning.
• We will then drive to Khulna and have dinner there.
• In the evening, we will board the Sundarban Express Sleeper to Dhaka. Some locals travel on the roof of trains, but our sleeper cabins will be much safer!
• Overnight on the train

Friday 27th June – Arrival in Dhaka

• We will arrive in Dhaka at 7:00am, which a few hours to spare before the start of our Bangladesh, Bhutan & Nepal: Unexplored South Asia Tour.