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But 10 minutes later, things take a turn for the better. The development around town is, indeed, a mess, but it’s (currently) contained, which means you can leave the main parasol-strewn stretch behind and find yourself wandering the expansive shore, totally alone. It may not be bright-white sands and tur-quoise waters – the color scheme is more beige and dusky blue – but it is wild, empty, pine-fringed and seemingly never-ending. Later, we take a boat trip to Sonadia Island, 9km away. We’re the only people there – aside from a handful of fishermen, who live on the island year-round, drying fish in bamboo huts.

It’s similarly unexpected to find a burgeoning surf scene here. We’re taken under the wing of the local surfing gang, who promise they’ll have me stand-ing up in my first lesson. One of them, Ramjan, explains how the first Bangla-deshi surfer started here around 2002 when an Australian tourist left a board behind. “With no wax and no leash, he kept falling off, but he managed to teach himself. We’d never seen anything like it, not even on TV. So we asked if we could learn too.”

The Forests: South-west Leaving our surfer friends behind, we move on to Bangladesh’s other major

draw: the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. On the map, you can clearly see the crisscrossing tributaries at the mouth of the Ganges making a fringe on the bottom of the country, and spilling across into India.

We book a boat trip with Pugmark , the longest-established operator in the region. Visitors would typically take a three- or four-day trip, staying overnight in the boat’s basic but snug cabins. We only have a day. As we drift along the muddy waters, beside the low-rising, tangled foliage, we spot Ganges dolphins (like marine dolphins but with longer noses). Then, in a side stream, we run into some fishermen with a curious technique. To steer the fish into their nets, they use otters on leads. Loudly squeaking and squawking, the otters work in pairs to herd the fish.

“It’s a dying tradition,” one fisherman tells us. “It’s hard to make a profit. I’m not sure we can do it for much longer.” Otters and dolphins aside, the main wildlife draw is, of course, the Bengal tigers. Around 500 live in the Sundar-bans, but my expectations for seeing one are realistic – our guide has only ever had two sightings, each a two-second glimpse, right in the darkest depths of the forest). Nonetheless, when we moor to go for a walk, seeing a clear tiger footprint in the mud is thrilling enough.

As a precaution, we have a gun-wielding escort, Mizan. We ask him what the procedure is if he spots one. Clearly a frustrated thespian, he widens his eyes, hunches his back and jabs the rifle out, threateningly. He’d fire as a warn-ing, he says, rather than to kill. The protection laws are strict, but the threat for people living here is real. In 15 years, Mizan has seen 45 critical injuries and 15 deaths caused by tigers. Local honey collectors are the most at risk, because the time they spend looking up at treetop hives gives the beasts ample op-portunity to pounce.

Community projects: North-east

Ambitious eco-resorts are a clear sign of confidence in Bangladesh as a tourist destination. In Sylhet, the Shuktara Nature Retreat (shuktararesort.com, doubles from £34 B&B) is a group of brick and glass-walled buildings designed by a local architect amid rolling hills. In the Srimangal tea-growing area further south in Sylhet, DuSai (dusairesorts.com, rooms from $120) is a grand resort that claims to be the first five-star offering outside of Dhaka. No doubt both also have their eyes on the Bangladeshi diaspora.

Yasmin also takes me to her ancestral village, Ali Nagor, close to where we started. It’s surrounded by paddy fields and fishponds, and by the Surma river, on whose sandy banks children are playing cricket. It’s where her father grew up and where, after founding a successful restaurant in the UK, he built a bungalow. It’s shady and cool inside, with a wraparound veranda that receives a steady stream of visitors, from Yasmin’s cousins to the local imam, who con-stantly flashes us big grins to reveal teeth stained from chewing paan (betel leaf combined with areca nut).

Yasmin puts together a potential itinerary for a place that has never seen a tourist: we’re shown how to make wood-fire curry in a pit in the ground; we take a moonlit midnight walk; we go foraging; we take lilos to the river with the kids. This part of the trip alone would have been reason enough for com-ing. One night around the bonfire, we talk about how the country has exceed-ed all our expectations. Our photographer, Nawaz, also British-Bangladeshi, has been in a constant state of disbelief. He admits he had “zero interest” in the country before this trip, but is now planning to return with friends.

—www.theguardian.com

FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

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