If you want to get rid of the fence of mechanical and artificial appearance, you have to visit the campus of Bangladesh Agricultural University, the green sanctuary known as ‘Daughter of Nature’ in Mymensingh. The university campus is spread over an area of about 1,200 acres at the western end of the old Brahmaputra River, 4 km south of Mymensingh town.

Located near the shores of the Brahmaputra River, a railway line also went through this charming green campus which enhanced its beauty more. Seeing the train running through the green nature makes you want to get lost somewhere, sometimes walking along the railway line with a gloomy mind can bring peace and happiness to your mind surely. And it is not easy to cope with the temptation to sit on the railway line and see the nature with fascination. Let’s float in the magic of this green and come back this time from the birth of this university.

The university started in 1961 with only two faculties. At that time, it was called “East Pakistan Agricultural University” and then it was renamed as “Independent Bangladesh Agricultural University” during the liberation War. It was the second highest budget public university in Bangladesh at 2013-2014. According to Web Matrix University Rankings 2017, it was ranked as the number one university in Bangladesh.

You cannot cover the entire campus in just one day during your travel. There are many interesting sites in this campus you must need to see, which includes the Botanical Garden, the world-famous Germplasm Center, the Liberation War Memorial Victory-71 ‘, the Genocide Memorial Observatory, the Shaheed Minar, the banks of the Brammaputra River, the Baishakhi Square, the country’s largest central mosque with one dome, the country’s only agricultural research museum, Fish Museum, the main centers of the two research institutes of the country are Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) and Bangladesh Atomic Agriculture Research Institute (BINA), Mango Orchard, Litchi Orchard, Coconut Orchard, Banana Orchard, Large Water Tank, Six Faculty Buildings, two administrative buildings, Student-Teacher Center, Graduate Training Institute, Central Library Building, Central Laboratory, Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin Auditorium with modern facilities with two thousand seats, Syed Nazrul Islam Conference Building, Engineering Building, Guest House, Club Building, 756 residential units, Firm, Field Lab, Clinic, Workshop, 13 beautiful halls for students, Stadium, Gymnasium, Ishan Kha Hall Lake, Health Care Center, Faculty Corridor, Bangabandhu Chattar, Prem Baranda, MaranSagar, Dormitory, Community Center, Agricultural University College (KB) , Agricultural University High School (KB High School), Night School, MuktijoddhaSmriti Primary School and many more.

Any nature lover is bound to get lost in the touch of its cool air as soon as you enter the main gate of the campus. And near the main gate you will first see the Agricultural University College (KB College) surrounded by neat and tidy walls.

After passing this college, you can enter the road on the left hand side and you can see the university club, community center and the memorial of the genocide on the banks of the river Brahmaputra.

A little further along the main road, through the teachers’ residential area, on the left hand side of the road in Security Zone-1, Baishakhi Chattar is also located right next to the river.

Throughout the year, people gather here to find some peace. This terrace became the liveliest place to welcome the first day of Bengali year called Pahela Baishakh. Small fairs are also held here on that day, students, teachers and outsiders also gather here wearing various traditional costumes.

Crossing the residential area of teachers, Kamal Ranjit Market (KR Market), crossing the four halls of girls and different faculty buildings you need to come in front of the Vice-Chancellor’s residence to see the monument of the Liberation War Vijay-71. It is an important sculpture of the university, which has created a beautiful atmosphere surrounded by the beautiful flowers.

Next to Vijay-71, Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin Auditorium organizes various programs including various cultural programs. An open stage has been set up in front of the Milanayatan. Here also different events are organized at different times.

Just in front of the open stage, you can see the mango garden, the central library and the administrative building. “Bangabandhu Chattor” is next to the Agriculture Department. Standing in this place on 13 February 1973, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared the agriculturists as 1st class officers of the country. This terrace has been built keeping that memory alive.

Next to it is the Central Library, Liberation War Books and Master’s Thesis papers and many more books can be found in its the ground floor. There is a cyber room next to the students’ study room on the second floor and a seminar room on the third floor.

If you enter the right hand side from the residence of the Vice-Chancellor along the main road, you will actually see the helipad, MaronSagar, Shaheed Minar. Right in front of it is the Agricultural University TSC where have the dining facilities, conference rooms, box office, newspaper reading rooms, offices of various organizations including the office of the University Journalists Association. There is a police camp next to it maintaining the discipline of the university.

If any tourist or outsiders come to visit Mymensingh, they never miss to visit this beautiful BAU campus. In this campus there are the country’s largest extinct endangered domestic and foreign fruit tree and the second largest Germplasm center in the world. The first and only agricultural museum in the country located on this campus. The best and internationally recognized Botanical Garden in the country in terms of biodiversity is located at this university. More than hundreds of tourists come to visit this campus every day.

The main attraction of the campus is the “Botanical Garden”. With the collection of all the rare plants, it has been developed in a beautiful environment on the banks of the Brammaputra River covering an area of 25 acres, which is the number one garden in Bangladesh in terms of conservation of endangered plant species. The garden is open from 2pm to 5pm on Sundays to Thursdays and from 9am to 5pm on Fridays and Saturdays & its entrance fee is 10 taka.

There are sculptures of tigers, lions, two swans and two storks in the island zone, deer under the Arcadia tree and other animals. There are a total of 600 species of trees in this garden. There are thousands of huge trees, 278 medium and 467 small trees. As a result, this huge garden has to be divided into 30 zones

The zones have also been named such as herbs, flowers, fruits, cactus, orchids, palms, spices, timber, bamboo, cane, rare, forest plants etc. There are water gardens for aquatic plants, rock gardens for plants that grow in deserts and rocky areas. There are extinct and rare cactus collected from different parts of the country in Nishargo Bhaban. To the south there is the Orchid House.

The Sundarbans trees are in the Sundarbans zone. There are even Sundari, Gewa, Garan, Keora, Pashur, Bain, Hogla and Fern trees. There are rows of rare and endangered cactus in the cosmos (Nishargo Bhaban) building. In the special archives called ‘Pot House’ where medicinal plants like Ashwagandha, Sarpagandha, Gandhabhaduli, Purnanava, Kurchi, Bach, Ulatchandal, Arjunarmul, Anjanetc will be found

And there are aromatic plants also. Among the different types of fruit trees from different countries are Star Apple, American Guava, Thai Guava etc and flowers include Cambritam, Rhondellia, Palam, Camellia, African Tulip, Ribelietc in the garden. There are also Lotas& Water Lily Lake, Artificial Island, Coconut Corner, Extinct Bamboo Shrubs etc.

There are benches to rest on while walking in the garden, you can sit on the green grass if you want, or you can take off your shoes and walk on the grass for a while and give a hearty feeling of coolness to your heart. While you walk around the garden, you will get to see the river again; you can sit there for a while and can chat with your companions.

After finishing the garden tour, you will find an octagonal museum with an area of 620 square meters on this campus. It has two office rooms and six well-appointed and beautiful rooms for exhibitions. This museum is the first and only agricultural museum in Bangladesh. In this ‘Agriculture Museum’, there are bamboo and cane baskets, ocha, mathala, bamboo baskets, turang, kurum, tera, khalai, cow dung, hookah, chalun, kula and duli, plow, yoke, ladder, spade, weeder, sickle, dheki, sanki etc.

Various types of soils including china clay and loam soils of Vijaypur have also been preserved in the museum. Apart from various types of fertilizers, rice, jute, pulses, gram, mustard, tomato and almonds invented by Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agricultural (BINA) have also been preserved in this museum

There are also different varieties of food grains, almost extinct fish. Various models of agricultural work including soil testing kits, insect collecting boxes and hill farming models have been preserved. There are skeletons of various wild animals including pythons. It’s open every day of the week except Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm. There is no entrance fee to the museum.

There are beautiful corridors through the six faculties of the university. Even if you only walk anxiously through the beautiful corridors of BAU campus, you can find peace. Depending on the collection of books on agriculture, there is the largest library in Asia in this campus with about 2 lakh 12 thousand books! Life would seem in vain if you leave the campus without visiting this library once as a book lover.

Inside the breathtaking natural environment, there is a museum located about one kilometer west of the Faculty of Fisheries the largest fish museum in Southeast Asia in terms of collection and diversity. The main museum is located on the second floor. As you climb the stairs, you will first see a list of fish divided into different categories and old bamboo stalks at the bottom of the stairs. The fourth gallery is particularly attractive. Here is a collection of fossils of extinct prehistoric fish and other animals. These wonderful fossils have been collected from the UK with the help of Starley University. This gallery contains 40 fossils and skeletons. The museum is open two days a week on Fridays and Saturdays from 8am to 12pm. It is open to all and does not require any ticket to enter.

According to the US-DARS study in the United States, it has the largest fruit tree collection in Bangladesh and Asia and the second largest in the world. The Fruit Museum was established on 1 acre site in 1991 with funding from Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation in collaboration with the Department of Horticulture in BAU for the Center for Fruit Gene Conservation, Education, Research and Training, Conservation of Fruit Hidden Nutrition and Improving Socio-Economic Status of Farmers.

At that time it was called Fruit Tree Studies. Later this project was named as Fruit Tree Development Project. Its current name is Fruit Tree Germplasm Center and covering an area of 32 acres. In summer season, there are innumerable raw and ripe fruits hanging on the dwarf trees which make the mouth watery.

The thorny uneven stems, resembling fire red eyes and the appearance of a dragon is a fruit named dragon of the cactus family being found here! Not just dragons, but thousands of species of attractive rare native and foreign fruit trees are grown there biting a piece of ground under the open sky. You will enjoy the beauty of different varieties of flowers all over the campus, but if you go to the Horticulture Center, then you will see the fair of flowers.

You can walk on the railway line or walk along the road of litchi garden, horticulture center, mango garden or the banana garden without any hindrance for a while holding the hand of your beloved ones. You can sit on the corridor of Bangabandhu Chattar or on the bank of the river and spend beautiful moments hours after hours effortlessly.

May be time will fly fast and twilight will come soon hanging around the whole campus. At that time you can sit beside the “Ishakha Lake” and enjoy the sunset. Beside the lake there is a terrace called “LalonChattar”. And nearby it is the GTI adjacent Low and Down Bridge, better known as “London Bridge” for short locally. Just seeing the nature you will get energy, but you have to eat too!

Even if the green nature satisfies the hunger of the mind, food is necessary to fill ones stomach, and there will be no shortage of it in BAU campus premise. There are many hotels to eat in the campus area- Jabbar Er Mor, Rail Line, KR Market, Karim Bhaban. In these hotels, you will find any kind of Bengali food items at reasonable price. There are also some fast food, juice, and tea shops.

And of course, don’t forget to capture the memory of every corner of this green courtyard of Bangladesh Agriculture University at all! It will give you a great memory which is more like a treasure. In the rainy season, you will find the most charming greenly sight of it. So you are welcomed to our Daughter of Nature.

Khatun-A-Jannat Asha is a media activist & an Entrepreneur.