Cox's Bazar Beach

Cox's Bazar runs along the south-eastern coast of Bangladesh, on the Bay of Bengal, and is generally cited as the longest natural unbroken sea beach on earth — around a hundred and twenty kilometres from the town south towards Teknaf. It carries a very large domestic tourism industry and almost no international one.

It is worth documenting precisely because it is not on the usual lists. This is one of the world's great beaches by any physical measure, used overwhelmingly by Bangladeshis, and the experience is correspondingly different: crowds are enormous on holidays, most people swim fully clothed, and the beach economy runs on domestic visitors rather than foreign ones.

The sand is fine and golden, the slope shallow, and the Bay of Bengal delivers a long shallow surf. Rip currents are a serious problem and drownings are frequent; lifeguard cover exists in the main sections near town and is thin elsewhere. The named sections — Laboni, Sugandha, Kolatoli — are effectively separate beaches with different crowds.

Development is a substantial town at the northern end with hotels of every grade, and then progressively less as the beach runs south. Inani and Himchari further down are quieter, with hills and forest behind. The Rohingya refugee settlements at Kutupalong lie inland from the southern end, which is a fact about the region that a register should not omit. Saint Martin's Island, four hours south by boat from Teknaf, is the country's only coral island and a separate proposition entirely — small, low and under serious environmental pressure from the day-trip traffic it now receives.

A hundred and twenty kilometres, the longest natural sea beach in the world, used almost entirely by Bangladeshis and almost never by anyone else. Most people swim clothed, the crowds at holidays are enormous, and the currents are serious with thin lifeguard cover. Kutupalong, an hour inland, is the largest refugee settlement on earth.