Bangladesh

Bangladesh is what happens when two of the world's mightiest rivers - the Ganges and the Brahmaputra - converge and pour into the Bay of Bengal through the largest river delta on Earth. Nearly 170 million people live in a country the size of Iowa, making it one of the most densely populated nations on the planet. The landscape is almost entirely flat, laced with hundreds of rivers, and during monsoon season roughly a third of the country floods. Life here is defined by water in ways that are difficult to comprehend from dry land.

Yet Bangladesh is one of the great development success stories of the modern era. Once dismissed as a basket case after its brutal 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, the country has dramatically reduced poverty, become the world's second largest garment exporter after China, and pioneered microfinance through Grameen Bank. Bengali culture is one of the richest in South Asia - this is the land of Rabindranath Tagore, of muslin fabric so fine the Mughals called it woven air, of the Sundarbans mangrove forest where Bengal tigers swim between islands. The language itself is a source of fierce pride: Bangladesh is the only country in the world that fought a war partly over the right to speak its own language.