Cox's Bazar Beach

Cox's Bazar Beach is the crown jewel of Bangladesh's coastline, holding the Guinness World Record for the longest unbroken sandy beach. The 120-kilometer stretch offers golden sands, gentle waves, and spectacular sunrises and sunsets over the Bay of Bengal. The beach divides into distinct zones from Laboni Point in the north to Teknaf in the south, each with its own character and attractions. The stretch most people actually mean when they say Cox's Bazar is the three kilometres linking Laboni Point, Sugandha Point and Kolatoli Point, all strung along one beach road and all a few minutes apart by battery rickshaw. South of Kolatoli the sand runs past Diabetic Point and Himchari beside the 80-kilometre Marine Drive towards Teknaf, thinning into empty coastline with almost no facilities. Base yourself inside the Laboni-to-Kolatoli triangle and treat everything below Himchari as a drive-out day trip rather than somewhere to swim.

Visit early morning for the quietest experience and stunning sunrise photography. The main tourist hub centers around Laboni Point and Kolatoli, where facilities are most developed. Rent a beach chair and umbrella from local vendors for $2-3 per day. Low tide reveals vast expanses of firm sand perfect for walking, while high tide brings waves ideal for swimming in designated safe zones. Concrete changing sheds and freshwater showers behind the Sugandha and Kolatoli entrances charge roughly $0.40 a rinse, and there is nowhere secure to leave valuables, so carry only what fits in a dry bag. Green coconuts go for about $0.60 and tea for $0.15, while roving photographers offering instant prints quote per shot — settle the figure before they press the shutter. For an empty frame, be on the sand before 7am; by 9 the chair rows run end to end.

Walking the developed strip from the Laboni groyne south to the Kolatoli entrance takes about 45 minutes on firm low-tide sand, and each point has its own trade. Laboni is the souvenir end: shell jewellery, conch shells, sunglasses and Burmese lungis, most of it identical from stall to stall. Sugandha Point is the food line, where plastic-table stalls grill rupchanda pomfret, coral fish, crab and lobster to order — expect $4-8 for a whole grilled fish, and confirm the price per kilo before it goes on the coals. Kolatoli is where the motors are: quad bikes on the hard sand at roughly $4 for ten minutes, jet skis $6-10, banana-boat runs $2-3. Behind the dunes, the planted jhau (casuarina) windbreak gives the only real shade. Eat at Sugandha, ride at Kolatoli, and buy nothing at Laboni until you have compared three stalls.

Getting here is easier than it was. Bangladesh Railway now runs the Cox's Bazar Express and Parjatak Express from Dhaka in roughly eight hours, with chair class around $5 and air-conditioned seats about $10-12; tickets go on sale ten days ahead online and sell out fast for weekend departures. The Iconic Railway Station sits about 7 kilometres inland at Jhilongjha — a battery tomtom to Kolatoli costs about $1, a reserved CNG auto-rickshaw $2-3, twenty minutes either way. Overnight coaches from Dhaka with Green Line, Shohagh, Hanif and Saintmartin Paribahan take 9-11 hours at $10-20 for air-conditioned seats and terminate at the Kolatoli and Jhawtala counters, five to ten minutes' walk from the sand. Flights land at Cox's Bazar Airport, 5 kilometres out, $3-4 by CNG. Skip renting a car in town; tomtoms cover the beach road for under $1.

The beach itself never costs anything, and there is no ticket booth anywhere along the 120 kilometres. Budget instead for the add-ons: chair and umbrella $2-3 a day, shower and changing shed $0.40, a beach horse at about $4 for half an hour, quad bike $4, jet ski $6-10, and a grilled-fish lunch at Sugandha for $5-8. A full unhurried day on the sand, food and transport included, runs $12-18 per person. The genuine expense is the room: beach-facing doubles at the Kolatoli and Marine Road properties sit around $25-40 outside the season and can double or triple between mid-December and mid-January. Reserved CNG to Inani and back along Marine Drive is $10-14, a car $25-35 — book it directly with a driver rather than through the beach-road tour counters, which quote several times that for the same trip.

Time it by the hour as well as the month. From 5:30 to about 7:30 the sand is close to empty and the light is soft; between 10:00 and 15:30 the glare is punishing and the hawker traffic peaks; from 16:00 the crowd thickens at Laboni and Sugandha for the sunset, which falls around 17:15 in December and closer to 18:20 in June because the coast faces west. After 19:00 the beach beyond the hotel frontages is unlit. Across the year, November to February is the season — dry, 25-30C, calm sea — with mid-December to mid-January and the Eid holidays the most crowded and most expensive weeks by a wide margin. March and April turn hot and sticky, late April to May and October carry cyclone risk, and the June-September monsoon closes swimming entirely. Come in February, midweek, and you get the good weather without the crush.

Families do well at the Laboni end, where the gradient is gentle, the lifeguard towers are staffed and there is a signposted women-and-children zone for anyone who prefers to bathe away from the main crowd; note that swimwear here is modest by custom, and most women enter the water fully clothed. Teenagers gravitate to the quad bikes and to the small local surf crowd near Sugandha, who rent boards by the hour. Wheelchair users should be realistic: there is no boardwalk, the dry sand is deep, and access effectively stops at the beach-road promenade, the concrete steps at Laboni and the hotel sea-view decks. On a wet afternoon the sand is pointless — go to the Burmese Market or the Radiant Fish World aquarium at Jhawtala instead. With only an hour before a train, Laboni is the one stop worth making.

Fold in what is close. The Burmese Market on the main road is a ten-minute walk inland from Laboni for Rakhine textiles, pickles and cheap cosmetics. Aggmeda Khyang, the old wooden Buddhist monastery, is about 2 kilometres away, ten minutes by rickshaw. North along the Bakkhali estuary, Fishery Ghat and its boat harbour are best between 6:00 and 8:00 when the trawlers land, with the vast Nazirartek dried-fish yard just beyond — pungent, photogenic, not for delicate noses. From 6 No. Jetty Ghat, speedboats cross to Maheshkhali island and the Adinath temple in 30-40 minutes for around $1.50 each way. Himchari National Park and its waterfall are 8 kilometres south, worth it mainly in the rains, and the boulder-strewn sand at Inani is 32 kilometres down Marine Drive, about 45 minutes. Pair a dawn hour at Fishery Ghat with the beach and skip the aquarium.

The honest caveats matter here. The water is silt-brown year-round, loaded with sediment from the Himalayan river system, so anyone arriving with snorkelling or clear-lagoon expectations will be disappointed — there is nothing to see below the surface. The 120 kilometres is not a single walkable ribbon either; the Bakkhali estuary and the Reju Khal channel cut it, and long southern stretches have no shade, water or transport back. Rip currents drown swimmers every season, including on days that look calm, which is why the flagged lifeguard zones are not a formality. After holiday weekends the sand near Kolatoli carries real litter, and geobag sea walls now scar parts of Laboni where erosion has bitten in. There are no beach bars and no alcohol. Treat this as a sand, sunset and seafood beach rather than a swimming resort, and it delivers exactly what it is.

The minimum you must see

Tips

Avoid weekends and public holidays when the beach is overwhelmingly crowded; visit Tuesday through Thursday for the best experience.

Hire beach horses from certified operators wearing ID badges (500 BDT for 30 minutes); avoid unlicensed touts.

Bring your own umbrella and mat to save money; beachside rental prices triple during peak season (November-February).

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