The ten-hour-long luxury-Mercedes-Benz bus ride to Cox's Bazar across the flat expanse of Bangladesh ends with a surprise. Coming up on Chittagong, the vehicle encounters an incline. For a country that rises northwards at a rate of just about five centimetres over a hundred kilometres, that is quite an achievement. And before long, you see what looks like a hill in the distance, though it could be a cloud bank. No, indeed it is a hill – a little bit off the Arakan range, which sneaks into Bangladesh to make this country one that also contains slopes and rocks, in addition to soil, rivers and mangroves. And, of course, beaches.
We were heading down to Cox's Bazar to take part in a meeting of Southasian journalists. There were unbelievers amongst us, which included journalists who swore by the beaches of Karachi, Colombo and/or Goa. The landlocked Nepalis kept their own counsel on this matter, as did the sizeable delegation from Afghanistan.
But indeed, Bangladesh did have a beach, claimed, at 124 untrammelled kilometres, to be the longest in the world. Correct that: the longest 'undivided' beach in the world, as a qualifier to take on challengers from Brazil to Australia to California, spoilsports who would like to take this natural wonder from out the grasp of Bangladesh. Also, the brochure claim for Cox's contains the rider that the beach includes "mud flats". Oh well.
The town, we are told, was named for a colonial officer in the time of Warren Hastings, who came here, did some good, and then died. And so, just as Chomolongma, as the highest peak, carries the name of the Director-General of the Great Indian Trigonometrical Survey, Sir George Everest, who never laid eyes on the massif, so too is the longest beach now known by the name of Lieutenant Hiriam Cox.