Tangail, Dhaka
A well-kept group of colourful zamindar palaces with ponds and gardens, now inside a police training centre and open to visitors.
The Mahera palaces were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by a wealthy Saha merchant family who became zamindars. Several large houses stand around lawns and ponds, each with columns, arches and decorated façades.
After the family left, the estate was taken over by the government, and it is now the home of a Police Training School. The buildings have been restored and painted, and the grounds are kept neat, which makes Mahera one of the most photogenic zamindar houses in the country.
Visitors can walk the grounds and see the palaces from outside; parts of the campus are restricted because it is an active training centre.
Take a Tangail-bound bus from Dhaka or a Dhaka-bound bus from Tangail and get off at Natiapara.
Walk around the palaces, ponds and gardens.
Eat at one of the roadside restaurants.
Continue to Tangail town for chamcham, or return to Dhaka.
October to March; check visiting hours and days locally, as they can change.
In Mahera, Mirzapur upazila, off the Dhaka–Tangail highway. Take a bus towards Dhaka, get off at Natiapara and take a CNG or battery auto-rickshaw to Mahera; allow about an hour from Tangail town.
