Bangladesh rarely makes any ‘top ten’ lists worldwide, but an often asked question comes more along the following lines: ‘Since I’m in Bangladesh, what are the top ten things I should see?’ Here’s a suggestion list to get you started:

Bangladesh’s people are at once its best resource and its most bothersome burden, as the population has skyrocketed over its short history. When Bangladesh was East Bengal in 1905, there were an estimated 29 million people living within its borders, a number which increased to 44 million just 50 years later when the region became East Pakistan. By 1981, the census reported a population of 81 million, and since then that number has almost doubled. Today, estimates range between 151 million and 155 million people, resulting in a population density of over 1,050 souls per km². This makes Bangladesh the most densely populated nation in the world (excluding several city-states like Hong Kong, Singapore or Monaco), and it feels like that when dozens of people crowd to have a gander at the strange foreigner visiting their village. Current projections estimate that by 2080, the population of Bangladesh could be 250 million.