Narsingdi, Dhaka
The excavated remains of a fortified town more than two thousand years old, with walls, a moat and a paved road, among the oldest urban sites in Bangladesh.
For generations, farmers at Wari and Bateshwar found coins, beads and pottery in their fields. In the 1930s a local schoolteacher, Hanif Pathan, began to collect and write about them, and his son Habibullah Pathan carried on the work, keeping the site in the public eye for decades.
Systematic excavation began in 2000 under archaeologists from Jahangirnagar University. They uncovered a fortified enclosure with earthen ramparts and a moat, a brick-paved road, house remains, and finds such as punch-marked silver coins, semi-precious stone beads and fine pottery. Dating places the settlement in the centuries before the Common Era, making it one of the oldest known towns in Bengal.
The finds suggest Wari-Bateshwar was a trading centre linked by river to wider networks. Some scholars have tried to match it with places named by ancient writers, but that remains debated. What you see today is modest — excavated trenches, the line of the ramparts, quiet village fields — but standing there you are on the street of one of Bengal’s first towns.
Take an early bus from Dhaka along the Dhaka–Sylhet highway towards Belabo.
From the highway, take a CNG into the villages and ask for the excavation site.
See the excavated trenches, the line of the ramparts and the old road, with a villager or guide if you can find one.
Eat in Belabo bazaar and, in season, buy lotkon on the way back to Dhaka.
November to March, in the dry season; excavation work, when it happens, is usually in winter
The villages of Wari and Bateshwar are in Belabo upazila, north-east of Narsingdi town. Take a bus along the Dhaka–Sylhet highway towards Belabo or Marjal, then a CNG to Wari village. Allow 1–1.5 hours from Narsingdi town; ask locally for the excavation site.
The sites are spread across the two villages; walk between them along village paths, or keep your CNG for the round.
