The Bangladesh Traveller

Nazimgarh Resort: A taste of Bengali luxury

Posted on 02. Mar, 2008 by Mikey Leung in Best of Bangladesh, Responsible Travel
You are here: Home » Blog » Best of Bangladesh » Nazimgarh Resort: A taste of Bengali luxury

~story by Mikey Leung~

There are some rare moments as a guidebook writer that I am given a chance to enjoy the peace and serenity offered to me by the natural beauty of Bangladesh, and I try to seek out these experiences whenever possible.

One of these rare moments came as I sat on the terrace outside my room at the Nazimgarh Resort. The highway traffic hummed from a distance, but my attention remain fixed on the sound of a dozen different birds chattering away in the trees, most of whom were winter migrants like my Canadian self. I had just taken a stroll around the well-tended grounds of the resort. The sun broke through the winter morning clouds, painting the nearby mango trees in a golden hue.

In short, I felt my soul replenishing.

After experiencing the utter chaos of so many Bangladeshi cities, after dodging rickshaws, sewers and killer busses, after crashing out in some of the cheapest rooms the country has to offer, I finally had a moment of peace. A glimpse of what is currently quite rare in Bangladesh: luxury of a soon-to-be international standard.

I’d been invited to Nazimgarh as their guest, to sample the service and to hear about the future vision of tourism development for the Sylheti region, specifically Jaintapur. My host is the intelligent and affable Nizam Kamran Chowdhury, a former politician and now Managing Director of the resort. As we sat in one of the dozen terraces, his visionary ideas for his region’s development flew thick and fast. It wasn’t long before he instructed his staff to pull out table-sized satellite images of the region patched together from Google Earth. Wielding a ruler, he showed me what the region will eventually become.

The former member of parliament envisions a master plan that will promote its exhilarating natural beauty to visitors. The resort is in fact situated in a river basin that catches water from neighbouring Assam and Meghalaya—known as the wettest region in the world for its record rainfall. As monsoonal water comes down from the hills into Bangladesh from India, it floods the vast areas nearby the resort (no, the resort itself would not be flooded!). Chowdhury’s ideas, if successful, will make this region the national hotspot for what I will bill “Monsoon Tourism.”

“The pre-conceived notion of tourism in Bangladesh is that it is a winter season,” says Chowdhury. “But the monsoon itself is something that people would like to see. What is less known is that we are a few miles from the wettest places in the world.”

For most visitors, it is no secret that Bangladesh floods every year, and for this it is often painted as a victim to the natural calamities that befall it. But in fact, people have lived here for millenniums, and what is less known is that the annual floods bring with them a rich deposition of silt and new topsoil, breathing agricultural life force into the land, which gives rise to the rice that fuels its people. These same people have written lyrical folk songs about the region’s beauty, in their unique dialect of Sylhoti, and have imbued the people here with a rich culture and heritage that forms a unique piece of the puzzle of the patchwork that is Bangladesh.

“We are trying to open up these beautiful mountain rivers,” says Chowdhury. “The colour of the water is emerald green. This is because the river is a sand river, and the water is filtered through the sand. It is one of the most pristine rivers in Bangladesh.”

Back on the ground, Chowdhury spoke of a multi-layered plan that would develop the infrastructure required to attract and support any manner of guest, local or foreign. The first project in this slate of ideas is the resort, which, once the other services come online (health facility, spa, beauty center), will become a most attractive and accessible destination, and hopefully remain more financially accessible than other luxury resorts I have experienced (but still far from inexpensive). During my visit in February 2008, the construction of these value-added facilities had yet to come online.

I did raise some concerns with him, knowing full well that the region is also populated with indigenous Khasia people, who should be considered partners in the region’s development. I also expressed my concern that the region should be developed sustainably, given that some of this nation’s other tourist attractions have been pillaged for the sake of tourism (Saint Martin’s Island is a particularly sad example of this). Below you will find a podcast with Chowdhury’s thoughts on those very questions.

“We’d like our guests to explore these areas,” says Chowdhury. “We would like to improve the communication to these areas and at the same time, as a development, we are trying to secure, clean and comfortable places for our guests to stay.”

“This is where the government has to play an important role in creating infrastructure so that other people can build facilities and resorts to cope with the growing demand. If the government is an active partner with the private sector in the development of infrastructure, then I think these issues could be addressed.”

Speaking of issues, there were minor indications that the newly opened resort still had a little way to go. With a Thai General Manager, one might have expected the rooms to be more warmly decorated with the more stylish elements of Thai or Bengali style. The decor was best described as spartan–additional touches of colourful furnishings or more tasteful upholstery would have helped spruce things up and modernize the “feel” of the resort’s interiors. We also had fairly low water pressure in our second floor room, and so the hot water came out in a dribble. The service was impressive, but do remember that English is not a first language in Bangladesh. However, none of these are serious ticks against a decision to stay at Nazimgarh, as its price is still well below other luxury resorts around Asia.

Lalakhal: Inland blue waters

Later in the day, Chowdhury invited us to tour Lalakhal, one of the first places he is targeting for tourism development. Earlier, the satellite images revealed a snaking, small river, surrounded by brown, dry landscape, which during the winter season would be more beach-like than flooded. During the monsoon, however, it was not hard to imagine the torrents of water sweeping down from the hills, filling up the region with its life-disrupting force and flooding the entire area with water.

Earlier, he described how the place is mythologized in Sylhoti folk songs, but remains undiscovered and unknown by most people, even Bangladeshis. In part this was due to the location’s inaccessibility, which, given the certainty in the way Chowdhury spoke, will change in the coming years with the assistance of his guiding hand. For now, the spot remained accessible only by boat.

As we approached the border, the Khasia hills of India began to appear from the winter haze, looming over Bangladesh’s flatness with a sentinel’s stillness. For the internationally-enabled traveller, the hills looked enticing, full of forests and tiny villages waiting to be explored. But on the Bangladeshi side, the beauty took on a different form—the area would become an inland sea when the monsoon was in full swing.

At the resort’s boat launch, we clambered into specially-equipped vessels that use Thai-style longtail engines to keep them moving in shallow water. In 30 minutes, we were whisked to Lalakhal via the Sharee River. The journey was picturesque: locals were seen doing their daily rituals of washing and bathing; boatloads of sand-miners chugged past us in wooden boats—a stark contrast to our brightly painted tourist boat. Most impressive however, was the colour and quality of the water. Because of mineral deposition, all the rivers of the area are a striking turquoise hue, surreal in the sense that such water normally belongs in the Gulf of Thailand, not here in Sylhet.

It was winter season, and so Lalakhal was not filled with water at this time. Instead, there was a sandy pitch over 300 meters long. Just off the river bank, Chowdhury had a small campground set up in a betel nut grove. The tall, narrow trees offered some delicate shade, and instantly I could imagine bringing a group of friends up with nothing but a frisbee, firewood and a guitar to pass a peaceful night by the river.

I have agreed to visit the area again when it floods, not only to experience this extraordinary geographical phenomenon, but to see the beauty of monsoon played out across the Bangladeshi landscape.

People who come to Bangladesh are in fact quite hardy, but we do need more places to recharge our batteries, and rest our nerves, for the cities of Bangladesh are chaotic places that flow only to the rhythm of anarchy. Chowdhury’s Nazimgarh Resort is one such place, which takes the Bangladesh travel experience far off the beaten path, by offering its antidotal charms to intrepid Bangladeshi adventurers.

And that’s what made it all the much harder to leave for Dhaka once again.

—
The writer was hosted as a guest of Nazimgarh Resort.

The resort can be contacted at (0821) 2870338. In Dhaka at (02) 885-3290 or by e-mail: reservation [at] nazimgarh [dot] com.

Otherwise, feel free to tour the resort’s nicest room via Youtube:

Feedback? We welcome your comments.

Tags: luxury, monsoon tourism, Nazimgarh Resorts, rivers, Sylhet