City of Mosques and rickshaws — Old Dhaka's Mughal streets and hilsa fish curries
Dhaka is one of the world's most densely populated capitals — a city of 22 million where half a million cycle-rickshaws thread through Mughal alleyways, and where the hilsa fish (national fish of Bangladesh) drives a food culture as passionate as anywhere in the subcontinent. Old Dhaka's Shakhari Bazaar and the river port of Sadarghat are unlike anything else in South Asia.
Dhaka served as the Mughal capital of Bengal under Islam Khan from 1608, becoming the center of muslin production so fine it was called 'woven air' by traders. British colonialism shifted power to Calcutta, and the city declined until partition in 1947 — when it became capital of East Pakistan. The Liberation War of 1971, in which millions died, created Bangladesh, and Dhaka has since grown into one of the world's fastest-growing megacities.