Mahastangarh is an archeological site in the middle of Bangladesh, near Bogra. Admittedly, you need to be an imaginative person, because what you find there is a landscape with some grass covered hills. Some parts of the site can only be recognized as such by the signboards, like the Govinda Bitha, a temple dedicated to Vishnu, at the north side. The city of Mahastangarh is at least 2,300 years old, and only its foundations have made it till today. These can be seen in the main part, the Citadel, nowadays used by young lovers who walk up and down the remnants of what once must have been city walls.

The signboard at the Govinda Bitha temple states, that it is built in the 6th century. The city used to be called Pundranagarh and was situated on the bank of the river Koratoya, and must have been the earliest and largest city of Bengal. The citadel hill is considerably higher than the other hills around it, it looks like more than 4 meters, and covers an enormous area. There are Hindu, Buddhist as well as Muslim traces here, reflecting the passing occupiers over the years. It is still in use as a pilgrimage place for Hindus.
Even though the tourist had not reached this place yet, either, we saw some local tourists and a tourist bus, and even a stall selling tourist rubbish! To me, the nicest part of the journey was the way there, through green rice fields, banana orchards, mango orchards and the occasional mustard seed field.

There was also a museum, praised by "The lonely planet". Even though we bought tickets at the gate and walked straight towards it, when we came to the door the museum guard would not let us in due to lunch hour. We could not manage to spend the planned two hours lunch, just walking up and down the citadel, and therefore could not have a look at all the excavations, which may have been there.
The surrounding population apparently don’t fantasize often about their past. They have built houses, graveyards and established vegetable gardens on the site. The government says this is forbidden, but the trespassers claim to have land deeds, which is well possible, because landownership in Bangladesh is just as shady as the outlines of the old city.