Rajshahi, Rangpur & the North

The north-west holds the oldest remains of urban life in Bangladesh. Mahasthangarh, north of Bogura, is identified with Pundranagara, capital of the ancient land of Pundravardhana, and has yielded finds from about the 3rd century BC. From the 8th century the Buddhist Pala kings ruled from this part of Bengal, and the Pala king Dharmapala is credited with founding the great monastery of Somapura at Paharpur, a centre of learning for several centuries.

The Hindu Sena dynasty followed, and then the Muslim conquest of the early 13th century. Gaur, the capital of the Bengal Sultanate, lay on the border of today's Chapai Nawabganj, and its Choto Sona Mosque, built during the reign of Alauddin Hussain Shah, stands on the Bangladeshi side. Under the Mughals and then the British the north became a land of great zamindar estates — Natore, Puthia, Dinajpur, Tajhat — whose families built the temples and palaces that remain. Rajshahi grew as a silk-trading town on the Padma.

The British period also brought famine, most notoriously in 1770, and peasant uprisings, including the Tebhaga sharecroppers' movement of 1946–47, strong in Dinajpur. Partition in 1947 cut the region off from Murshidabad, Malda and Cooch Behar across the border. In 1971 the north was a scene of heavy fighting, and after independence the poorest northern districts suffered repeated seasonal hunger, known as monga, which has eased greatly in recent decades.

The north is quieter and more conservative than Dhaka, and proud of its own identity. Rangpur's dialect is distinct, and its folk song, bhawaiya, speaks of cart drivers, rivers and longing. Chapai Nawabganj is the home of gambhira, a satirical folk performance in which a grandfather and grandson argue over the issues of the day. Rangpur is also proud to be the birthplace of Begum Rokeya, born in 1880 at Pairabondh, the pioneer of Muslim women's education, whose birthday on 9 December is marked nationally.

The region has a significant Hindu population, and Durga Puja is celebrated with large pandals in Dinajpur, Rajshahi and the temple towns. The north is home to Santal and other Adivasi communities, with their own languages, music and harvest festivals such as Sohrai. Pabna and Sirajganj have strong ties to Tagore, who managed family estates at Shahzadpur, where his estate office, the Kachharibari, still stands.

Crafts are practical: silk from Rajshahi, the woven cotton rugs called shataranji from Rangpur, and handloom cloth in Sirajganj. The mango harvest has become a festival of its own, with orchards, markets and courier services all busy through June and July.

Rajshahi is a city of about a million people with its satellite towns on the Padma, known in Bangladesh as a clean, green and relatively calm city with a large university and a riverside promenade where people gather in the evening. Rangpur, Bogura and Dinajpur are the other main centres, and Bogura, at the junction of the northern highways, is a commercial hub. Sirajganj and Pabna, closer to Dhaka, have seen industrial growth since the Jamuna Bridge opened in 1998.

This is Bangladesh's grain basket. Rice, wheat, maize, potatoes and vegetables are grown on a large scale, with deep tube-wells irrigating the dry Barind, where falling groundwater is a serious worry. Mango orchards have spread widely across Rajshahi, Chapai Nawabganj and Naogaon, and Panchagarh and Thakurgaon have planted flat-land tea gardens in recent decades.

Water is the other constant. The reduced dry-season flow of the Padma, blamed on the Farakka Barrage upstream in India, and the unresolved sharing of the Teesta are political issues here. In Kurigram and Gaibandha, families on the shifting sandbanks of the Brahmaputra and Teesta, called chars, lose land to erosion almost every year.

The north eats well and simply. Rajshahi's great product is its mangoes, eaten fresh, made into pickles and dried as amsotto, a chewy mango leather. Varieties include Fazli and Himsagar (also called Khirsapat), and Chapai Nawabganj claims some of the best. Dinajpur is known for fragrant Katharibhog rice and for litchis.

Chapai Nawabganj's everyday speciality is kalai ruti, a thick, chewy flatbread made from black gram, baked on a clay pan and eaten with mashed chilli, onion or aubergine. The district also has its winter shira, date-palm juice, and molasses.

Sweets travel from here to the rest of the country. Bogura is famous for its doi, sweetened yoghurt set in clay pots until thick; Natore for kachagolla, a soft, loose sweet of fresh chhana, milk curd, with sugar; and Rajshahi for its sweet shops along the main roads. Tea is taken strong and milky at stalls everywhere, and winter brings rice cakes with date-palm molasses.

Around Bogura and Naogaon lie the region's ancient sites. Paharpur's Somapura Mahavihara, the great Buddhist monastery, is a square of monks' cells around a towering cruciform temple of brick, decorated with terracotta plaques, with a small site museum. Mahasthangarh, north of Bogura, preserves the ramparts of Pundranagara, a museum of its finds and the shrine of Shah Sultan Balkhi, and the Gokul Medh mound nearby is linked with the legend of Behula.

Rajshahi's mango country spreads west into Chapai Nawabganj, where the Choto Sona Mosque stands among orchards near the border. Rajshahi city has the Varendra Research Museum, founded in 1910, and the Padma embankment. East of the city, Puthia has one of the best temple groups in Bangladesh: the Shiva temple of 1823 beside its pond, the richly carved Govinda temple and the Puthia palace. Natore has the Rajbari of Rani Bhabani, the 18th-century zamindar.

Further north, Rangpur has Tajhat Palace and Begum Rokeya's memorial at Pairabondh. Dinajpur has the Kantajew temple, completed in the mid-18th century and covered in terracotta panels, and the large Ramsagar tank. At the northern tip, Tetulia in Panchagarh looks towards the Himalayas, and on clear autumn days Kanchenjunga is visible on the horizon.