Sonargaon

After rather a hectic week, yesterday I had a van so a group of us went for a day trip out of Dhaka to the old capital of Sonargaon. It contains buildings built between the 15th and 19th centuries, with architecture from the era of the Sultanate, Mughal and colonial period. It originated as the capital of the fifteenth-century ruler of Bengal - Isa Khan. Only 23 kilometres from central Dhaka, it took us almost 2 hours to get there but only one hour to come home.

The first place we stopped was at the museum but it closed before we had time to enter but we could wander around the grounds. The above building looked like an old palace but I am not sure if that was the case. This is some close-up detail of the building above.

There was also a couple of lakes, with the first of many patches of mauve-flowering water hyacinths that we saw. There were lots of Bangladeshi people wandering around and relaxing. There shops selling craft goods but nothing food wise.

Many of the exterior walls were decorated with mosaics such as the one below.

Entertainment for the children consisted of a "man-powered" ferris wheel shown below. There was also two "man-powered" merry go rounds for the younger ones.