Bandarban

Viewpoints and the easy version

If you have two days and no appetite for a trek, Bandarban still delivers. Nilachal is fifteen minutes from town on a hilltop above the Sangu valley, and on a clear morning the whole valley is under cloud with the ridges standing out of it. Nilgiri, at around 2,200 feet, sits above the cloud line at dawn and is the single most photographed spot in the hill tracts — the resort at the top is army-run, and the sunrise is the reason people stay overnight.

Chimbuk ridge lies on the road between them, with Mro villages on the slopes either side and roadside stalls selling fruit and hill-grown coffee.

The Sangu river, Shoilo Propat waterfall and the Buddha Dhatu Jadi — the golden temple above the town, the largest Theravada Buddhist temple in Bangladesh, with a Burmese-style stupa you climb steps to reach — fill the rest of an easy itinerary. None of it needs walking boots.

Trekking country

The serious walking is further south and east, beyond Ruma and Thanchi: Keokradong, Tazing Dong, the crater lake at Boga, and the Nafakhum and Remakri falls on the Sangu. These are multi-day trips on rough, steep, often unshaded trails, sleeping in village guesthouses on the floor, washing in streams. They are also the best days you can have in Bangladesh.

Nothing here works without a registered guide and current permissions, and both are checked at army posts along the way. Distances look short on a map and take twice as long as you expect, because the trails go straight up and straight down rather than around.

Routes open and close with little notice, sometimes days before you arrive. Any operator promising a fixed itinerary months ahead without a permit check is not being straight with you — a good one will give you a plan and a fallback, and will tell you plainly if the answer this season is no.

• Boga Lake — a natural crater lake reached on foot from Ruma
• Keokradong — among the highest accessible summits in the country
• Nafakhum — the widest waterfall in Bangladesh, reached by boat and on foot from Thanchi

Visiting hill communities respectfully

The villages you pass through are homes, not attractions. People are used to walkers coming through and are generally welcoming, but that welcome is not owed to you.

Hire guides and porters from the communities you are visiting, buy food, water and handicrafts locally rather than carrying everything in, and pay the going rate without haggling it down — the sums involved are small to you and not to them. Ask before photographing anyone, particularly women and children, and accept a no without argument.

Accept, too, that some places will simply be off limits. The hill tracts have a long and unresolved history of conflict and displacement, and the restrictions you find irritating exist for reasons that have very little to do with tourism. That is the price of visiting, and it is a small one.