Habiganj: forests, tea and shrines in the south

Gibbon forests on the Tripura border, two dozen tea estates, old shrines and wide haors, all within easy reach of the Dhaka–Sylhet highway.

Most travellers see Habiganj through a bus window, on the highway between Dhaka and Sylhet, and that is a pity. The district holds two of the best forests in the division, Satchari and Rema-Kalenga, where hoolock gibbons still call close to the Tripura border, and its southern hills are lined with tea. To the north the land drops into haors so wide that in the monsoon a visit to the Bithangal Akhra is a journey by boat.

It is also the part of the Sylhet division closest to Dhaka, and it rewards a slower trip than most people give it: a morning in the forest, an afternoon among the tea, and an evening at a shrine or on the water.

Why go to Habiganj

Habiganj covers about 2,600 square km in the south-west of the division, between the Tripura border and the haors of Sunamganj and Kishoreganj. It falls neatly into two halves. The south and east, in Chunarughat, Madhabpur and Bahubal, are low hills of forest and tea; the north and west, around Baniachong, Ajmiriganj, Lakhai and Nabiganj, are flat floodplain crossed by the Kushiyara, Kalni and Khowai, with haors that fill in the monsoon.

For a visitor this means variety within short distances: you can be in a gibbon forest at dawn and on a haor by evening. The district is also a little off the main tourist circuit, so its forests are quieter than Lawachara and its shrines and akhras are little known outside the region.

History and people

Before the 14th century the southern hills formed a small kingdom called Tungachal, with its capital in what is now Chunarughat upazila. In 1304, by most accounts, a force led by Syed Nasiruddin, acting according to tradition at Shahjalal's direction, defeated its last raja, Achak Narayan, and the land became known as Taraf. Nasiruddin stayed on as its first Muslim ruler. The town of Habiganj is usually said to take its name from Habibganj, founded by Syed Habib Ullah of the Syed zamindar family of Taraf.

Baniachong was the seat of the zamindar Anwar Khan, who joined Musa Khan, leader of the Bara Bhuiyan chiefs, against the Mughals; his resistance and his surrender in 1611 are recorded in the Mughal chronicle Baharistan-i-Ghaibi. Under British rule Habiganj was a subdivision of Sylhet district from 1874 (one account dates the subdivision itself to 1867), and the southern hills were cleared for tea, with workers brought in from other parts of India whose descendants still live on the estates. The district was created on 1 March 1984.

In 1971 the district played an early part in the War of Liberation. On 4 April, Colonel M. A. G. Osmani met senior Bengali army officers at the bungalow of the Teliapara tea estate in Madhabpur, then the headquarters of the 2nd East Bengal Regiment, and they agreed how the resistance would be organised and commanded. Fighting spread across the district; at Ajmiriganj on 16 November the freedom fighter Jagat Jyoti was killed in a clash.

Most people are Bengali Muslims, with a Hindu minority of about 16 per cent (2022 census). The tea estates are home to Munda, Santal, Oraon and other communities, Tripura villages sit in and around the forests of Satchari and Rema-Kalenga, and there are Khasi and Manipuri families too. The district's well-known names include the Swadeshi leader Bipin Chandra Pal, BRAC's founder Fazle Hasan Abed, and Ramnath Biswas, born in Baniachong in 1894, who cycled across much of the world and wrote about 40 books in Bangla.

Satchari and Rema-Kalenga

Satchari National Park

Satchari is a 243-hectare block of hill forest on the Raghunandan hills in Chunarughat upazila. It became a national park in 2005. The name means seven streams, after the creeks that run through it. Nine tea estates lie around it, Satchari to the west and Chaklapunji to the east among them, and the Tripura border is close by.

For its size it is crowded with life. About 200 bird species have been recorded, with some 24 mammals, 28 reptiles and 190 butterflies. Hoolock gibbons, capped langurs, Phayre's leaf monkeys and pig-tailed macaques live here, and the bird list runs from red junglefowl and the red-headed trogon to the Oriental pied hornbill. A Tripura village, home to about two dozen families in 2007, lies inside the park.

• Why go: one of the easiest gibbon forests to reach from Dhaka; allow about 3 to 4 hours by road, depending on traffic.
• Best season: November to March for dry trails and birds; September and October for green forest after the rains.
• How long: a morning. There are short, medium and long marked trails, and a watchtower over the canopy where mist often hangs early in the day.
• Getting there: the park sits on the old Dhaka–Sylhet highway, which runs through Madhabpur and Chunarughat upazilas. From Shaistaganj, Madhabpur or Chunarughat, hire a CNG autorickshaw and agree the fare, waiting time and return before you set off.
• Watch out for: holiday crowds and loud groups near the entrance, leeches in the wet season, and the advice against using the Satchari road at night (see Safety).

Hire a guide at the park office and start as early as you can. Guides know which fruiting trees the gibbons and langurs are visiting that week, and a quiet two- or three-hour walk with one sees far more than a wander alone.

Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary

Rema-Kalenga, deeper into Chunarughat along the Tripura border, is larger and wilder: about 1,795 hectares of hill forest in four blocks, Rema, Kalenga, Chhanbari and Rashidpur. It was set up as a sanctuary in 1982 and enlarged in 1996, and BirdLife International lists it as an Important Bird Area. Surveys record 167 bird species, 37 mammals, 18 reptiles, 7 amphibians and 638 plants, including five kinds of squirrel. There has been no confirmed tiger since 1971, but leopards are occasionally reported, possibly strays from the forest across the border.

Three marked trails take about 30 minutes, 1 hour and 3 hours, and a tall watchtower rises above the treetops beside a small winding lake dug to give birds and animals water. Tripura, Santal, Telugu and Oraon communities live in and around the forest.

• Why go: a full day in real forest with few other people about.
• Best season: November to March.
• How long: a full day, or a night nearby and an early start.
• Getting there: from Shaistaganj, a CNG autorickshaw to Kalenga cost about Tk 500 to 600 in 2025; from Sreemangal, a hired jeep cost about Tk 2,000 to 3,000. Allow plenty of time and settle the return before you leave.
• Watch out for: the border is close, so keep to marked trails and take a local guide for the long walk.

Tea estates and Teliapara

Habiganj has about two dozen tea estates covering roughly 15,700 hectares, many of them in Chunarughat. The Chunarughat gardens once sent their tea out by rail: a branch line from Shaistaganj to Balla on the Tripura border, opened in 1929 to carry tea, took the crop of 22 estates from stations at Chunarughat, Amu Road and Assampara. The last passenger train ran in 2003.

The estates are working farms and home to their workers' families. Walk the public roads that cross them and stop for tea at a roadside stall; in spring you may see Holi celebrated with colour in the workers' lines. Ask before entering factory compounds or homes, and before photographing people at work. The tea-country chapter explains how an estate works.

The estate best known for its history is Teliapara, in the semi-hilly tea country of Madhabpur. Its manager's bungalow served as the headquarters of the 2nd East Bengal Regiment in April 1971. At the meeting held there on 4 April, commanders were given charge of the first operational areas of the Liberation War, and the Teliapara Liberation War Monument now stands in the estate near the bungalow. Teliapara is in the same hills as Satchari, so the two combine easily in a day.

Madhabpur Lake, often listed among the sights of the region, is in Kamalganj in Moulvibazar, not in Madhabpur upazila of Habiganj. Make sure your driver knows which Madhabpur you mean; see Madhabpur Lake.

Shrines and sacred sites

Habiganj's sacred sites are quieter than the great shrines of Sylhet city. Dress modestly, take off your shoes where others do, keep your voice low and ask before photographing worshippers; Shrines, temples and sacred sites covers the etiquette in detail.

Murarbandh Darbar Sharif

Tradition holds that Syed Nasiruddin, a saint born in Baghdad who joined the Sylhet campaign with Shahjalal, led twelve companions against the raja of Taraf at Shahjalal's direction and then governed the conquered land. His tomb lies at Murarbandh in Chunarughat upazila, where a hujra, a small devotional room linked with the saint, also survives. It is the shrine most closely tied to the founding story of Taraf.

Shankarpasha Shahi Masjid

In Uchail Shankarpasha village, in Rajiura union of Habiganj Sadar upazila and close to Uchail Bazar, stands the Shankarpasha Shahi Masjid, a mosque of the Sultanate period. Banglapedia dates it to between 1494 and 1499, in the reign of Sultan Alauddin Husain Shah. It names no builder, but local tradition and the national tourism board credit Majlis Amin, an official of that sultan, whose tomb lies beside it. For years the building stood half-lost in thick vegetation, and it has only recently drawn wider attention.

Bithangal Akhra

The Bithangal Akhra stands at the edge of a haor in Bithangal village, about 12 km south-west of Baniachong and some 30 km from Habiganj town. It is a Vaishnava monastery and place of pilgrimage, by local accounts about 450 years old, with more than a hundred small rooms for resident monks and old marble platforms among its treasures.

In the monsoon the classic way there is by boat across the haor, a trip worth making for the water as much as for the akhra; in the dry months ask in Baniachong which road is open. Behave as you would in any temple: shoes off at the entrance, modest dress, and no photographs of the monks or the inner rooms without asking.

Baniachong, the haors and lesser-known sights

Baniachong

Baniachong is often called the largest village in Asia. Banglapedia repeats the claim, as a plain statement in its upazila entry and as a matter of local pride in its entry on the village, but it is a local claim rather than a measured ranking. Its size is real enough: Banglapedia puts its population at about 100,000, divided among four union councils. Banglapedia puts the spread down to the land itself, since farmers and fishers built on every patch of raised ground beside the haors and seasonal cultivators added satellite hamlets near their winter fields.

It has a long history as a seat of power. Anwar Khan ruled from here in the early 17th century, and at the time of the Permanent Settlement, Banglapedia notes, the holder of Baniachong pargana was the only landholder in Sylhet with the title of zamindar. Remnants of the old Rajbari, dated 1737–38, survive at Puranbagh, along with old mosques such as the Bibir Dargah mosque. The great Sagar Dighi, an old tank named in local tradition after a queen called Kamala, is one of the village's best-known landmarks.

The haors of the north

Around Baniachong, Ajmiriganj and Lakhai the land falls into a chain of haors. Banglapedia names Sona, Jaldoba and Makalkandi among the large haors of the old Baniachong pargana, and notes that they were farmed and fished in winter but hard to live on in the rains. From June to October the villages stand above the water as they do in Sunamganj, and boats take over from many of the roads.

These haors never grew the houseboat trade that built up on Tanguar, where houseboats and tourist boats have been banned from the Ecologically Critical Area since August 2026. That quiet is their appeal. Hire a country boat with a local boatman, go in the late afternoon, and you will see fishing and village life on the mounds without houseboats or loudspeakers. In winter the remaining beels draw migratory ducks.

Lokkhi Baor swamp forest

Also in Baniachong upazila is Lokkhi Baor, a freshwater swamp forest that a 2020 Bangla newspaper report described as larger and older than Ratargul, though few visitors find their way there. Go in the wet season with a local boatman, and treat it as you would Ratargul: quietly, and leaving nothing behind.

Highway towns, gas fields and the district town

The main Dhaka–Sylhet highway (N2) crosses the district through Madhabpur, Shaistaganj, Bahubal and Nabiganj upazilas. Shaistaganj, the railway junction, is the practical hub, where buses, CNG autorickshaws and trains all meet. Madhabpur grew around a market that a local zamindar set up on the banks of the Sonai river in the 19th century.

Under the district lie some of the country's main gas fields. Rashidpur, in Bahubal, was discovered in 1960; the Habiganj field in Madhabpur in 1963, with production from 1968; and Bibiyana in Nabiganj in 1998, with production from 2007. The Shahjibazar power station also stands in Madhabpur. These are industrial sites, not places to visit.

Habiganj town, on the Khowai, is a busy district centre rather than a sight in itself, but it has a few landmarks: the Sultanshi Haveli, associated with the poet Syed Sultan; the old tank of Syed Gaous at Mashajan; a Ramakrishna Ashram and a Kalibari; and Brindaban Government College, founded in 1931.

Food and where to stay

Habiganj eats like the rest of greater Sylhet, with rice, freshwater fish, bhorta and strong tea; Food and tea describes the dishes to look for. Fish is the local pride. Banglapedia lists fish, with paddy, among Baniachong upazila's main exports, and in the dry season, when the beels are fished, haor fish fills the markets.

Most travellers eat in Habiganj town or at the simple restaurants along the highway at Shaistaganj, Madhabpur and Bahubal. There is little or nothing to buy inside Satchari and Rema-Kalenga, so carry water and snacks and bring the wrappers back out.

Accommodation is limited and mostly simple, with the widest choice in Habiganj town and around Shaistaganj. Rema-Kalenga can also be reached by jeep from Sreemangal, so some visitors base themselves there instead and come over for the day. Browse current options at stays in Habiganj and stays in Sreemangal.

Getting there and around

By road: buses between Dhaka and Sylhet run through the district on the highway, so tell the supervisor where you want to get off. In 2025 a Sylhet-bound bus from Dhaka to Shaistaganj cost about Tk 250 to 300, and for the drive to Satchari allow about three to four hours, depending on traffic.

By train: Shaistaganj Junction, on the main line between Dhaka and Sylhet, is the district's railhead. The overnight Upaban Express, which stops at Shaistaganj, is one option; it runs six days a week, so check its day off. The old branch line into Habiganj town closed to passengers in 2003 and has since been taken up, so from Shaistaganj you continue by road. Check current timetables with Bangladesh Railway before you travel.

Getting around: CNG autorickshaws are the workhorse and can be hired by the trip or by the day from Shaistaganj, Habiganj town and Chunarughat; agree the fare, the waiting time and the return before you set off. For the haors, ask at the ghats around Baniachong and Ajmiriganj in the wet season and settle the price for the whole trip.

See Getting there and getting around for buses and trains across the division, and Sreemangal and Moulvibazar if you plan to continue east.

A suggested route

Three days are enough to see the best of Habiganj without rushing:

• Day 1, forest and tea: take the overnight train or an early bus to Shaistaganj and go straight to Satchari for a guided morning walk. Stop at the Teliapara memorial, spend the afternoon among the Chunarughat tea estates, and sleep in Habiganj town or Shaistaganj.
• Day 2, Rema-Kalenga and Taraf: leave early for Kalenga, walk the long trail with a local guide and climb the watchtower. Afterwards visit Murarbandh Darbar Sharif in Chunarughat, then return to Habiganj or carry on to Sreemangal for the night.
• Day 3, Baniachong and the haor: see the Shankarpasha mosque at Uchail, then go on to Baniachong for the Sagar Dighi and the Rajbari remains. In the wet season, take a boat across the haor to the Bithangal Akhra and be back before dark; in the dry season ask locally about the road. Return to Shaistaganj for the train or bus.

With a single day, do Satchari and Teliapara in the morning and a tea estate in the afternoon. With more time, continue to Sreemangal and Moulvibazar for Lawachara. Baikka Beel was officially closed to the public in February 2025, so check whether visitors are allowed before you plan a stop there.

Safety and etiquette

• Border: Satchari and Rema-Kalenga run up to the Tripura border. Stay on marked trails with a guide, never approach or cross the border line, and carry photo ID.
• The Satchari road at night: in February 2025 police told people to keep off the old highway through Satchari after 10 pm, and officials later described this as advice rather than a ban; the 13-km stretch through the forest and tea estates is remote, hilly and has no mobile signal. Plan to be off it by dark.
• Water: haor trips are pleasant in calm weather, but monsoon winds can raise real waves. Insist on life jackets, avoid overloaded boats, turn back if the sky darkens, and do not swim where there is current.
• Forests: wear closed shoes, carry water, check for leeches after wet-season walks, and never feed or approach monkeys.
• Tea estates and villages: ask before entering worker lines or homes and before photographing people, and dress modestly.
• Shrines and akhras: remove your shoes where asked, keep quiet during prayers and kirtan, and ask before taking photographs.

For more, see Responsible travel, Practical information and the chapter on haors, forests and wildlife.