Sylhet district, tucked in the northeast corner of the country and coloured by the myriad greens of tea plantations and tropical rainforests, is a prime, though relatively undiscovered, destination for visitors to Bangladesh.
As in the rest of the country, waterways dominate the district's geography and the lives of its inhabitants. The Surma and Kushiara rivers wind through the Sylhet valley which, along with the heavy monsoonal rains, ensure the region is thoroughly irrigated.
The abundance of water accounts for the widespread cultivation of tea, one of Sylhet's principal sources of foreign income. Few spectacles reveal that distinctive subcontinental blend of man-made and natural beauty more vividly than the tea plantations of Sylhet, especially the emerald green terraces of Srimangal, 'the tea capital of Bangladesh'. Tea gardens carpet the terrain for as far as the eye can see, and Sylhet leads the world in tea production as measured by plantation yield.
Not all the flora and fauna is native to the land. Migrant birds from Siberia settle on tree shrubs of Srimangal in the winter months. Tourists see Bangladesh as a country for all seasons.
Images of teeming city streets and intensively farmed flood plains tend to overshadow the country's rich natural beauty, which includes jungle wilderness. A growing eco-tourism industry will see the inclusion of the Sundarbans mangrove swamps, the Chittagong hills, Cox's Bazaar (home to the world's longest beach) and the verdant Sylhet division, in the shadow of India's Jaintai hills.
The Sundarbans is a cluster of islands covering 3,600 sqkm and adjoining the Indian Sundarbans, on the other side of the border. It is the world's biggest mangrove forest. The islands, found at the southern extremity of the Ganges delta and bordering the Bay of Bengal, are also the natural habitat of the Bengal tiger, spotted deer, crocodiles, wild boar, Rhesus monkeys and a dazzling variety of birds. Streams, creeks, rivers and estuaries dominate the landscape, the life and the livelihoods of the people of this country. The local industries of fishing and honey-collecting are part of the visitor's sightseeing tour.