Everything here moves at once: rickshaws painted with bright murals, green CNG autorickshaws, buses with dented flanks, cars, cargo bikes and pedestrians, all swarming through the same space with a kind of fluid logic.
The city sits on the Buriganga River, and its history is longer than its modern chaos suggests. Dhaka was a Mughal provincial capital in the seventeenth century, and from that period come the Lalbagh Fort, an unfinished palace complex with a gentle garden and a tomb, and the pink Ahsan Manzil, the riverside palace of the Nawabs of Dhaka. The old city's narrow lanes are full of brass workers, bookbinders, sweet shops and some of the best street food in South Asia, including kacchi biryani and bakarkhani bread. Dhaka is also famous for its muslin cloth, once so fine that it could be drawn through a ring, and for its enormous fleet of cycle-rickshaws.
Be realistic about riding here. Traffic is intense, rules are flexible, and a foreign rider will need local knowledge, a good deal of patience and probably a local guide. Roads flood in the monsoon, and the pollution can be heavy in winter. Think carefully about licences, insurance and permission to bring a vehicle, and consider hiring a local bike with a driver for the city part.
The long day described here heads southwest toward Bagerhat, where the Sixty Dome Mosque and other fifteenth-century monuments built by the saint-governor Khan Jahan Ali stand among ponds and palm trees, inscribed as a UNESCO site in 1985. The route crosses the great rivers of the Ganges delta, and the Padma Bridge, which opened in 2022, has made the trip dramatically quicker than the old ferry crossing. Fuel is easy to find in and around Dhaka, but start early to beat the traffic.
If you can, finish with tea on a rooftop or a river cruise at dusk, when the city's noise is softened by the light.