Khulna, the Sundarbans & the South

The south-west was the frontier of Bengal, a land of forest, tidal rivers and new ground being cleared for rice. In the mid-15th century the Muslim saint and administrator Khan Jahan Ali founded the town of Khalifatabad, today's Bagerhat, on the edge of the Sundarbans, building mosques, tanks, roads and his own tomb before his death in 1459. The Sundarbans themselves were a place of refuge and of legend, where Hindu zamindars such as Pratapaditya of Jessore resisted the Mughals in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Under British rule, Jessore became a district in 1781, and the region grew indigo, whose planters' abuses provoked the Indigo Revolt of 1859–60. Kushtia and the Padma estates drew Tagore, who managed his family's lands from Shilaidaha, and the Baul poet Lalon lived and taught nearby. Khulna grew as a river port, and Barishal, the old Bakerganj district, became a rich rice and trading centre known for its rice.

The coast has lived through great disasters. The Bhola cyclone of November 1970 killed hundreds of thousands, and Pakistan's weak response deepened the anger that led to war in 1971. On 17 April 1971 the provisional government of Bangladesh was sworn in at Baidyanathtala in Meherpur, renamed Mujibnagar. Since independence the region has faced Cyclone Sidr in 2007, Aila in 2009 and others, and the Padma Bridge of 2022 has finally tied it closely to Dhaka.

This is the home of the Baul tradition. Lalon, the 19th-century mystic poet of Kushtia, sang against caste and religious division, and his followers still gather at his shrine in Chheuriya, gathering for the festival marking his death in October and at the spring full moon. The Baul songs are recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage. The region also produced the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, born at Sagardari in Jashore, Jibanananda Das of Barishal, and the painter S. M. Sultan of Narail, who settled beside the Chitra river.

Hindu communities are larger here than in most of the country, and Durga Puja, Kali Puja and the boat races held on rivers after the monsoon draw whole villages. On the edge of the Sundarbans, honey collectors, woodcutters and fishermen, Hindu and Muslim alike, pray to Bonbibi, the forest goddess believed to protect them from tigers, before going into the forest.

The Rakhine community of Patuakhali and Barguna, Buddhist and of Arakanese origin, keeps its own temples around Kuakata. Barishal people are known across Bangladesh for their dialect, their sharp humour and their political passion.

Khulna, a city of several hundred thousand on the Rupsha, is the south-west's commercial centre, built on shipping, fish processing and trade through the nearby port of Mongla. Jashore is a transport and trading hub close to the Indian border, Kushtia a textile and farming town, and Barishal the main city of the southern delta, built along the Kirtankhola river.

The coastal economy depends on water. Shrimp and prawn farming spread across Satkhira, Khulna and Bagerhat, bringing export income but also turning rice land salty. Rising salinity, storm surges and embankment breaches are the defining problems of the coast, and many families have moved to Khulna, Dhaka or abroad. On the edge of the Sundarbans, men still collect honey, catch crabs and fish in the forest's rivers under permit, and tiger attacks remain a risk of the trade.

In Barishal and Bhola daily travel runs on boats: launches, trawlers, ferries and small wooden craft on canals where roads do not reach. Rice, coconuts, betel nut, guava and hilsa are the staples of trade. The Rampal coal-fired power station near the Sundarbans has been a long-running environmental controversy.

The south cooks with prawns and fish. Golda chingri, the giant freshwater prawn, is cooked as chingri malaikari in coconut milk, and bagda, the tiger prawn, and mud crab are farmed and exported. Hilsa from the Meghna and Tetulia around Bhola is fried, cooked with mustard or steamed in banana leaf. Khulna's own speciality is chui jhal, a rich curry of beef or mutton flavoured with chui, the pungent stem of a local pepper vine.

Jashore is known for khejur gur, the molasses made from date-palm sap tapped on winter nights, sold liquid or as hard patali cakes and used in pitha rice cakes, payesh rice pudding and winter sweets. Kushtia is known for tiler khaja, a crisp sesame and sugar sweet.

Barishal's cooking relies on coconut and on the delta's fish, vegetables and rice, and its guava harvest fills the floating markets in the rains. Sundarbans honey, collected from wild bees in the mangroves, is sold in Khulna and Satkhira. Across the region, meals are rice, dal, fish curry and bhorta, and tea is taken sweet and milky at riverside stalls.

The Sundarbans is the reason most travellers come. The Bangladeshi part of the mangrove forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is explored on multi-day boat trips from Khulna and Mongla along tidal channels to Kotka, Kochikhali and Hiron Point, with walks on wooden trails, spotted deer, crocodiles, kingfishers and, for the lucky, tiger tracks in the mud. Karamjal near Mongla is a shorter day trip. The tigers are shy and seldom seen.

Bagerhat, within reach of Khulna, holds the mosque city of Khan Jahan Ali: the Sixty Dome Mosque with its forest of slim stone columns under low domes, the saint's tomb beside a tank that is still home to crocodiles, and smaller mosques such as Singair and Nine Domes scattered among villages and ponds. Khulna itself is the gateway town.

In the west, Kushtia has Lalon's shrine and Tagore's Shilaidaha Kuthibari, Sagardari has Madhusudan Dutt's family home, and Mujibnagar in Meherpur has its memorial complex. In the river delta around Barishal, launches pass along wide rivers to the Durga Sagar tank, the floating guava markets of Jhalokati and Pirojpur, and on to Bhola's islands. On the coast, Kuakata offers a long beach, the Rakhine temples of Mishripara and nearby mangroves.