Rent a car with a driver in Dhaka

HSIA (DAC) is the country's main gateway and sits in the north of the city at Kurmitola, close to Uttara and about 20 km from Gulshan — but plan the journey by time of day, not by distance. Arrivals into the diplomatic zone can be twenty-five minutes at 6am and well over an hour in the evening peak.

For arriving passengers, the crowd outside the arrivals concourse is intense and the drivers calling for your attention are not the one you booked. We send the meeting point and the driver's details in writing beforehand so you know exactly where to walk. See Dhaka airport transfers.

The diplomatic and corporate belt — Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara — accounts for most business travel, along with Dhanmondi, Motijheel and the newer commercial development along the Purbachal corridor. Uttara matters disproportionately because of the airport.

Old Dhaka is a different proposition. Ahsan Manzil, Lalbagh Fort, Shakhari Bazar and the river ghats are all worth seeing and all effectively inaccessible in a large vehicle. We will usually recommend a compact saloon and a driver who knows where to wait.

Dhaka is where most of our corporate transport work sits: executive cars on monthly assignment, staff pick-and-drop by microbus, and visitor collection for head-office colleagues flying in.

For companies, the calculation is straightforward. Owning vehicles in Dhaka means employing drivers, managing maintenance and finding cover; hiring converts it into one predictable monthly figure with downtime cover included.

A great many Dhaka bookings are not about Dhaka at all — they are the start of a long drive. The Dhaka to Sylhet run on the N2 and the long southern haul to Cox's Bazar both benefit enormously from an early departure, ideally before the morning build-up on the exit roads.

If you are landing internationally and heading straight out of the city, we will normally recommend going directly from the airport rather than into Dhaka first. See Dhaka airport to Sylhet.