ETHNOMAD
The Sangu River:
Between Beauty and Absence
Written by Farhana Akter
Published by ETHNOMAD, March 2026
The Sangu River route from Thanchi to Remakri is considered one of the most famous routes in Bandarban, Bangladesh. Part of its popularity comes from the number of tourist spots along the way, and part from its isolation, as this entire stretch lies beyond mobile network coverage. As I travelled along it, I was reminded that this river does not begin here. The Sangu rises in Myanmar, enters Bangladesh through the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and flows across Thanchi, Rowangchhari, and Bandarban Sadar before finally meeting the Bay of Bengal. Stretching roughly 270 kilometres, it was once deep enough for large boats to travel along it, carrying trade and people through these hills.
Today, the river tells a quieter story, shaped by low water, noisy engines, and the heavy footprints of visitors. People come here to feel small. The land pays the price for that feeling. What happens when a river that sustains both people and wildness is forced to serve too many futures at once?
For most of the year, except during the three months of the monsoon, the Sangu carries very little water. At several points along the route, the water level drops so low that passengers must step out of the boat and walk for a distance. The boatmen then push the boats forward by hand until the water deepens again. When I asked one of the boatmen whether it had always been like this, and what the river looked like a decade ago, his eyes softened with memory. “Ten or fifteen years back,” he said, “the water used to stay higher at this time of year. Now it barely reaches.” His words hinted at a river slowly retreating from its own banks.
A conversation with Indigenous residents along the way revealed a pattern. Forests have thinned, hills have loosened, and stone has been taken from the riverbed. Deforestation, land erosion, and stone extraction have dried up the small hill streams and canals that once fed the Sangu, reducing its flow. In Bandarban, people told me that boat races were once held ahead of Sangrai, but the river no longer has enough depth for such gatherings.
From Thanchi to Remakri, engine-powered boats are the only means of transport for both tourists and locals. As tourism has increased, so has the pressure on the river. Boats now travel this route more frequently than before.
Their rotating blades churn the shallow water, creating constant noise and violent disturbance. With so many boats moving along the same narrow path throughout the day, the river’s aquatic environment struggles to recover. Fish are unable to maintain the natural habitats they depend on.
Across long stretches of the route, I did not see a single fish. At one point, I noticed a few boatmen sitting beside their boats, fishing nets and hooks in hand, waiting. Their baskets remained empty.
A longtail boat scrapes across a shallow stretch of the Sangu River, its propeller churning against exposed stone as passengers ride through thinning water. In the dry season, stretches like this force boats to navigate by hand and engine, revealing how far the river’s depth has receded.
The Indigenous communities in Bandarban largely depend on streams and springs woven through the hills. However, while wandering through the hills, I saw many streams dried up, even though it was not yet summer. Experts from the Bangladesh River Explorers Association and the National River Conservation Committee state that at least 400 springs and streams are already dead due to illegal stone extraction and deforestation, leaving fewer trees and stones to retain water.
Although on 24 February 2019, the High Court ordered the relevant government authorities to immediately halt stone extraction from the Sangu and Matamuhuri rivers in Bandarban, unregulated stone lifting continues across the hilly upazilas of Lama, Alikadam, Rowangchhari, and Thanchi. According to a report by Dhaka Tribune in 2019, concerned sources stated that the local authorities grant permission to extract a specific quantity of stones within a fixed time frame. However, many influential individuals exceed the approved amount.
Contractors working under such influential figures reportedly received permission from the district administration to extract stones from all streams and waterfalls in Lama.
A stone trader's account reveals the scale of extraction in Bandarban in a more grounded, everyday sense. He described how a mini truck typically carries around 100 cubic feet of stone, while a larger truck can take up to 150. By his estimate, no fewer than ten trucks loaded with stone leave Lama upazila each day, an unbroken flow that quietly reflects how continuous and extensive the extraction has become. As a result, water bodies and rivers are gradually drying up, and in a real sense, Bandarban is turning into a desert.
Standing by the river, I could see how much damage had already been done to the Sangu River by unregulated tourism, too. Plastic waste left behind by tourists clings to the banks. Oil from longtail engines spreads thinly across the surface. Waste from ghats, roadside food stalls, hotels, resorts, and cafés near tourist spots is discharged directly into the water. The Sangu, once spoken of as the lifeblood of Bandarban, now carries what is poured into it.
And yet, the river’s route remains striking. Hills rise steeply on both sides, and along the banks, trees lean toward the water, their roots exposed and gripping the soil beneath. Looking at them, it is easy to see how these roots once held the land together. The stones of the Sangu are another presence altogether. On the boat journey from Thanchi to Remakri, enormous boulders appear repeatedly along the riverbed. Among them, Raja Pathor (King Stone) and Rani Pathor (Queen Stone) stand apart. Rising from the middle of the river, they seem almost deliberate, like guardians placed there long ago. To local Indigenous communities, these stones are sacred, tied to rituals, forming something like a stone fortress within the river itself. It is believed that if anyone tries to transport something illegal along this route without paying respect to the stones, divine forces will punish them.
Over time, I heard repeated complaints about illegal stone extraction. These stones were not only landmarks but part of the river’s structure, holding water and shaping its current. As they are removed, the Sangu loses its familiar rhythm.
IUCN Records show that the Sangu once supported more than 100 native fish species, along with prawns, crabs, and even sightings of Ganges river dolphins in its lower stretches. Today, Indigenous fishers can still be seen with nets and hooks in hand, yet their baskets remain empty. Except during the monsoon season, the river’s current weakens so drastically that even lightweight boats must be pushed by hand at several points. At the same time, these boats are powered by longtail engines. As the propellers cut through shallow water, they generate loud noise and constant turbulence, disrupting the aquatic habitat fish need to survive.
Stepping away from the river and deeper into the hills of Bandarban, the transformation continued. From Remakri Bazaar, I walked deeper into the wilderness and noticed tree trunks cut and left beside the path. Locals say some trees were taken for commercial crops, while others say people from Bandarban town come to cut and carry them away. Even five or six kilometres deeper into the wilderness, the signs of logging persisted.
What has replaced the older landscape is often monoculture. Banana trees stand in uniform rows along the slopes where diverse crops once grew. These plantations cannot hold soil as well as mixed vegetation. When the rains come, the earth now washes down into the jhiris and from there into the Sangu. In the dry season, those same streams fall silent.
During the monsoon, the river becomes something else again. With fewer stones to slow it and banks narrowed by erosion, the Sangu can no longer hold the rain the way it once did. When heavy rainfall arrives, it swells suddenly, rising with a force that feels less like abundance and more like imbalance.
What remains along the Sangu is not just a river and a route, but a series of absences: fewer fish, drying streams, silent stones, and traditions that no longer find space to return. Each absence is remembered clearly by the people who live here, measured not in statistics, but in years, seasons, and quiet comparisons with what once was.
An Indigenous woman steers her wooden boat through a shallow bend of the Sangu, paddle cutting carefully between exposed stones. Along this stretch from Thanchi toward Remakri, navigation demands strength and memory, as falling water levels turn a once-deep channel into a shifting corridor of rock and current.
It is not just the river. While wandering through remote villages, I had imagined a wild landscape untouched by modern noise, where fireflies would flicker at dusk, and crickets would resonate through the night air. In the city, we speak of these sounds nostalgically. But here too, where artificial light is scarce, and the forest still holds dark pockets of shadow, there were almost no fireflies and only the rare chirp of a cricket. The absence stayed with me, and I asked my local guide, Hla Thowai Marma, why this was the case. He replied simply that there was a time when fireflies could be seen here, but now they are no longer visible.
He spoke quietly, as if recalling something fragile. There was a time, he said, when hardly anyone came to these hills. The nights belonged entirely to wilderness. After dinner, they would climb onto the bamboo machang and sit together in the open air. From there, if you lifted your eyes to the sky, you would see countless small stars trembling in the blackness, so many that the sky itself seemed alive.
And it was not only the sky. Across the slopes of the surrounding hills, tiny lights flickered among the trees. Fireflies moved through the night like scattered embers, constantly glowing and fading. The hills carried their own constellation.
“In your cities,” he told me, “you have electric starry lights, strings of bulbs decorating your special occasion. For us, these were our lights.”
Now, he said, it is different. Perhaps the hills have changed. He did not say this with certainty, only with the quiet recognition that something once ordinary has become rare.
At one point along the way, I stopped at a small tea stall and spoke with an elderly resident about wild animals. Earlier, while eating at a restaurant in Alikodom, I had noticed a tourism department signboard warning about wild elephants. Now that I was much deeper inside than Alikodom, I asked whether elephants ever came this far. He told me that ten to fifteen years ago, elephants could indeed be seen deep inside the hills. They caused no harm; they would come, pass through, and leave. But as tourists began arriving and human settlements slowly expanded, elephants stopped coming. Now, seeing one here is almost unheard of.
I asked whether there were any wild animals left besides elephants. He said that deer are hunted for survival, but that this practice has increased significantly. People now come from outside the area to hunt wild deer for commercial sale. The animals have not vanished from record, but they have withdrawn from view, pressed into the shrinking interiors of the hills.
As if the pressure on the Sangu and the shrinking wilderness were not enough, tourism adds another weight of its own.
Beyond Remakri, deeper into the hills, lie Nafakhum and Amiakhum, often called the Niagara of Bengal, which once held a quieter majesty. I remember Nafakhum in 2018, when the landscape still felt unbroken. Homestays and tea stalls were few, and travellers who reached the remote village after a long trek would stay in local homes, carrying the tranquillity of the waterfall into their sleep.
Recently, a hanging bridge has been constructed directly in front of Nafakhum. For those who seek wilderness and hike all day to reach it, a structure standing before a natural phenomenon can feel like a subtraction from its appeal, a reminder that the search for untouched land is increasingly overshadowed by the industry that claims to celebrate it.
Several cafés run by local people have sprung up near the waterfall. Without sufficient awareness among visitors, the experience often ends with plastic teacups left behind, which eventually end up in the water. Nafakhum, which once stirred emotion even in those raised within the mechanical rhythm of city life, now risks losing its essence as it becomes increasingly commercial.
It is often said that one has not truly seen Bangladesh without seeing Bandarban. The Indigenous communities here have long lived in close harmony with nature. Visitors are welcomed graciously and urged to respect the land. But to what extent can those accustomed to city life, where pollution and waste mismanagement are part of daily existence, adapt to this way of living? Many speak of eco-tourism, but behavioural change must come first.
Moreover, tourism management in the remote hills of Bandarban remains inconsistent. At popular viewpoints such as Nilgiri and Nilachol, tourism is comparatively well organised, monitored by the local administration and security forces, and visitor entry is more regulated. Tourists arriving there usually experience formal management and visible control.
However, the situation changes as one moves deeper into the hills. In upazilas like Alikadam and Thanchi, especially toward remote villages such as Roma or Remakri, tourism is largely informal. For a long time, routes leading to places like Nafakhum Waterfall and Amiakhum Waterfall have faced periodic restrictions due to security and safety concerns. Even after the ban has lifted, visitors are expected to take local indigenous guides and comply with administrative or security instructions.
Travel to these areas is often coordinated by independent adventure groups rather than through structured government systems. Although their intention is usually to promote responsible tourism and minimise environmental harm. Yet, as the number of visitors increases and formal oversight remains limited, maintaining sustainability and safety has become more challenging.
Bandarban cannot be separated from tourism. The livelihoods of many Indigenous people now depend on it. What is concerning is the possibility that this region might follow the path of Sajek, where popularity led to commercial hotels cutting hills, clearing trees, and displacing local communities in the name of accessibility. If the mountains, streams, and forests that draw visitors begin to disappear, then what people come seeking will no longer exist.
My days spent in the remote villages of Thanchi and Bandarban tell three intertwined stories: a river losing its depth but not yet its memory; wild animals displayed on tourism boards yet rarely seen in the forest; and Indigenous communities whose lives were once shaped almost entirely by the rhythms of the Sangu, now adjusting to a future influenced by mismanaged tourism.
Change, if it is to come, cannot focus on the river alone. The Sangu has not been dredged since the independence war in 1971, and sediment from landslides and eroded hills continues to narrow its channel. But restoring depth requires more than machinery. It requires restoring the forests that hold the soil, protecting the stones that slow the current, and rethinking monoculture practices that weaken the slopes. It requires recognising that eco-tourism is not only a label, but a discipline of behaviour.
Clear guidelines for visitors, stronger regulation of extraction, and genuine partnership with Indigenous communities must become central rather than symbolic. Without this, the river will continue to thin, the hills will continue to loosen, and the absences will quietly multiply.
The Sangu still flows. It still carries beauty through the hills. But whether it continues as a living river, rather than a memory described in the past tense, depends on choices being made now, both by those who visit and those who govern.
Bamboo shops line the Sangu’s exposed bank, their thatched roofs and woven walls built for a landscape that never stands still. In the dry season, the river withdraws and the stones surface; in the monsoon, water reclaims the shore. Here, commerce, conversation, and survival rise and fall with the current, as communities calibrate their lives to the river’s shifting edge.
Read More About Life in Bangladesh
.jpg)