Sreemangal is a small town, but a well-kept one, with a touch of beauty in all its buildings. Tea gardens cover most of it; wherever you look, tea gardens fill your eyes.

The sight is a stunning display of green. So this time Minhaj Uddin Rubel bhai and I rode motorbikes to Sreemangal's attractive tea gardens.

A tea garden means adventure, and gardens wrapped in green are very attractive to us. Bangladesh has seven tea valleys in all, six of them in Sylhet division, with a total of 138 tea gardens. Sreemangal alone has 38, which is why it is also called the capital of tea.

With so many gardens, it is hard to decide which to visit. Travelling through the east of Sreemangal, you will feel as if all the beauty in the world is in front of you. Take a rickshaw, a mishuk or a private car into the gardens.

Once inside, it feels like a different world, as if an artist had arranged the green in layers with all their heart. There is nothing but green all around.

After the tea gardens you can go to Lawachara National Park, 7 km from Sreemangal on the Bhanugachh-Kamalganj road.

Lawachara is a beautiful meeting place of biodiversity and wildlife, known as a tropical forest. Rich in biodiversity, it is an attractive place for seeing animals and birds, with lakhs of trees of thousands of species standing in rows on the slopes of the hills.

As soon as you enter the national park, you will see the trees on both sides of the dim road holding back the sunlight. Look up at the treetops now and then and you will see monkeys and langurs leaping about.

A little further in you will see civets, jungle fowl, gibbons, fishing cats, jungle cats and other animals, the park's huge trees, the roars of animals, the sound of crickets, leaping monkeys and troops of gibbons calling.

Even for a short while, it will ease the fatigue of a busy life and bring a touch of peace. In the gaps of busy city life, people still want the touch of a green sanctuary or a little quiet solitude.

With travellers in mind, a picnic spot has been built at Shyamoli inside Lawachara National Park. Dressed in beautiful green, Shyamoli is a sight for nature lovers and travellers, as the rows of vehicles parked on both sides of the road show.

Vehicles from different parts of the country carry banners of different kinds and colours; some read "Pleasure trip to Shyamoli" or "Study tour", others "A few of us on a picnic".

People are getting busier by the day, and the pressure of work is sinking them into monotony. To escape it, they come to calm, pure green nature.

Shyamoli seems to have dressed in evergreen to meet that need. Its reputation as a tourist spot has spread across the country. It has many kinds of trees, and nowhere else in the country can such a variety of trees be seen together. Shyamoli is 7 km from Sreemangal town along the Bhanugachh road.

Soon after setting off from Sreemangal for Shyamoli, you first see tea gardens stretching on both sides of the road. Past the road to the Bangladesh Tea Research Institute you will see trees standing in rows; yes, these are rubber trees. Soon after that you will easily spot white hills of kash flowers.

A green carpet under a blue sky, and on one side the soft kash flowers swaying in the autumn breeze. And a cup of tea during the outing would not be bad. It is truly unbelievable, astonishing even: seven colours of tea in one cup! It was created by Ramesh Ram Gour.

You can easily reach Ramesh's much-talked-about tea stall. Going along Kalighat Road in Sreemangal town towards the upazila health centre, you will see on the left, in the area of the BGB 14 Rifles Battalion headquarters, the "Nilkantha Tea Cabin", built in the style of a mini park.

Thanks to the media, the fame of his two- to eight-colour tea has spread beyond the country. Senior military and civil officials, ambassadors of various embassies, politicians, film and media personalities and tourists from different countries have tasted his tea, taken photos with Ramesh and written high praise of his remarkable tea in the visitors' book.

A visit to Sreemangal should not be only about green; you should also hear the splash of water. So go to the Joggokundo stream in section 14 of the Jagchhara tea garden near the town, home to Sreemangal's only waterfall, a place of rare beauty.

Anyone seeing this waterfall for the first time will be amazed. To see it, go from Sreemangal town along the Moulvibazar road, get off at Kakiabazar and turn right to the Jagchhara tea garden.

Or go from Sreemangal town through the Bharaura and Sonachhara tea gardens along the dirt road to Jagchhara, and ask anyone the way to section 14.

There you will see a bridge. Walk a little along the bank of the stream on the right side of the bridge and you will hear a rushing sound. Step down into the hill stream and you will see how, as if a magician had carved the ground, a path has been made for the water to flow. We enjoyed the beauty all around.

Then it was time to go home, though for a while we wished we could stay and chat a little longer. Everything was so beautiful! But life calls you back, so we rode our bikes back to our beloved city.

In the end, the beauty of this region, shaped by nature's tender care, cannot be put into words. There could be no better choice for losing yourself in green. Besides its cultural variety, countless sights are scattered across every corner of the region to quench travellers' thirst.

Four intercity trains leave Kamalapur railway station in Dhaka for Sreemangal every day. You can also come to Sreemangal, the land of tea, from Sayedabad.

If you want to stay away from the noise, you can stay at the BTRI rest house or the Tea Resort inside the tea gardens. Sreemangal town also has more than 20 residential hotels, and rents are fairly low. Notable hotels in the town include Tea Town Rest House, Nirala Rest House, Elahi Plaza and Hotel Mukta.

Written by Rubel Ahmed Alif, senior financial adviser, Sonali Life Insurance Company Limited.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.