Chittagong: the maritime gateway to the tribal hills

Bangladesh's principal port, Chittagong remains the departure point for the Chittagong Hills, a region with cultures distinct from the rest of the country.

The center, maritime gateway to the tribal hills of the southeast, is comfortably explored by motor rickshaw.

The Chittagong shipbreaking yard, among the largest in the world, dismantles hundreds of large ships annually along the beach of Sitakunda.

Minutes away, Foy's Lake Hill, with its artificial lake, remains a public park popular for families and evening walks.

Heading inland one reaches the Chittagong Tribal Hills, a mountainous region inhabited by Buddhist and Christian ethnic minorities distinct from the Muslim Bengali majority.

As evening falls, the historic port of Chittagong animates maritime commerce, the economic heart of Bangladesh since colonial times.

Chittagong's ship-breaking yard dismantles roughly half of all large vessels scrapped worldwide each year, an industry employing tens of thousands of workers along the coast.

Chittagong's Tribal Hills host over eleven distinct ethnic groups differentiated from the Bengali majority, with languages, religions, and traditions bringing them culturally closer to Southeast Asia than to the rest of Bangladesh.