Walking Dhaka: Where crowded lanes, chaos and history reveal a city’s soul

I am a walker by nature. But rarely do I walk in nature. As one of the few Dutch people around, I also don’t own a bicycle. Instead, I simply walk everywhere.

My favourite journeys are those on foot across megacities of the more strenuous kind. Recently in Dhaka, I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer number of routes through the old city, each more delightfully uncomfortable, and bafflingly exhausting than the next. For days, I was truly living my best life.

Bangladesh in general, and certainly Dhaka in particular, rarely features high on must-see destination lists. Yet, there is something deeply alluring about cities nobody seems to have much affection for. Manila is excellent when explored on foot. Though people have assured me I must have had a death wish, considering some of the routes I chose.


São Paulo answers the question of why those who can afford it prefer to hop from one part to another by helicopter. Johannesburg doesn’t really do walking at all. Yet, something is inevitably lost when a city is experienced only through a car window. Exiting my hotel in the boisterous neighbourhood of Rajarbagh, my destination was Lalbagh Fort, in the heart of the old city. In theory, it was about an hour’s walk.

I knew it would take considerably longer, it being monsoon, therefore, not only hot, but also impossibly muggy. Besides, I wanted to take in an array of sights along the way: the massive Baitul Mukarram National Mosque, the grand colonial-era buildings and redbrick facades of Dhaka University, and Dhakeshwari National Temple. Further on, I was keen to explore the many ghats lining the Buriganga River.

All in all, it seemed the perfect introduction to the city. Navigating Dhaka’s enormous traffic-clogged roads, filled with endless sludges of cycle-rickshaws ringing their bells to no discernible effect, I gradually made my way into the smaller lanes funnelling visitors into the old heart.

Admiring the impossibly dense tangles of iring overhead, reminiscent of the set of a dystopian movie, I was reminded of a novel I had read before arriving. In the 2021 novel Cyber Mage, Bangladeshi writer Saad Z Hossain conjures a future Dhaka run like a company according to purely capitalist principles. The population density that characterises the city today has spiralled.

Yet ironically, it also guarantees its survival. Human bodies host colonies of nanotech that prevent disease and even death, while creating a microclimate protecting citizens from the worst effects of climate change.

There is one catch, though: the nanotech needs human cells, and so a certain minimum density of people. In effect, it’s the teeming masses of the urban poor who keep the middle-classes alive and in business. In Hossain’s future, the megacities of the ‘global south’ survive, while spacious, nature-rich countries such as Sweden and Canada collapse.

Hours of navigating puddles, dirt and grime had taken their toll. By the time I reached the Armenian Church, I was ready to collapse onto one of its benches. Displaced by Persian conquest, Armenians had found their way to Bengal and established a church here in the 18th century. Together with its surrounding graveyard, it offers a rare pocket of quiet in the middle of one of the widest, loudest bazaars imaginable.

Outside, stalls overflow with pots and pans. Spices are piled high. Textiles come in every imaginable colour and print, while handdrawn carts, rickshaws, bicycles, and small trucks compete for the same slivers of space.

It is mesmerising to contemplate how any of it works. Even more so when thinking about the future at stake while watching such enormous masses of people squeeze through narrow lanes, competing for space and air to breathe. One day, if Hossain is right, their sheer density might be precisely what is required for survival. For now, it remains survival of the fittest. And walking is often the only way to get anywhere.