Rangamati

Kaptai Lake

The lake covers around 700 square kilometres and reaches deep into the hills, which means a day on it never quite repeats itself. A half-day boat hire takes you past floating markets, bamboo fishing platforms, hillside villages reached only by water, and stands of dead trees standing in the shallows like posts.

Hire a boat for a fixed number of hours rather than per stop, agree the route before you leave the jetty, and start early — the morning light on the water is far better and the wind picks up after midday. A country boat costs a fraction of a speedboat and is much the nicer way to travel if you are not in a hurry.

The hanging bridge at Rangamati is the postcard shot and worth ten minutes, though it is often partly submerged when the water is high. Shuvolong, about an hour out by boat, has a waterfall that is impressive in the monsoon and a trickle in March.

Culture in the hill tracts

Rangamati is the seat of the Chakma Raj and the easiest place in Bangladesh to see hill tract weaving, food and Buddhist practice at close quarters. The tribal cultural museum in town is a useful primer — dress, tools, instruments, photographs — and the Rajbari and the Buddhist temples around the lake are the living version of the same thing.

The Chakma are Theravada Buddhists, and the monasteries around the water follow the same tradition you would recognise from Myanmar or Thailand rather than anything in the Bengali plains. Rajban Vihara, on the lake shore, is the largest and most active.

Backstrap-loom textiles sold in the town market are woven in nearby villages, and buying directly from the weavers or a village cooperative puts the money where it belongs rather than with a middleman. Look for the geometric bands of a Chakma pinon; they take days to weave and cost less than they should.

Getting on the water

Sajek Valley, further north in Rangamati district, has become the most popular hill destination in the country for domestic tourists — a ridge-top cluster of resorts famous for waking above a valley filled with cloud. It is spectacular and it is also busy, booked out weeks ahead in season, and reached by a long, rough drive that is usually approached from Khagrachhari rather than Rangamati town.

If you want the same view with a tenth of the people, stay on the lake and take a boat somewhere at dawn instead. The cloud does the same thing over Kaptai; it simply has no resort attached to it.