Katka and Jamtola beachকটকা ও জামতলা সৈকত

Katka is what people mean when they say they have been to the Sundarbans. It lies deep in the eastern sanctuary where the Katka creek meets the sea, a day's sailing from Mongla, and no day trip reaches it: you come on a two- or three-night cruise, sleeping on the boat. The forest office and rest house stand on the creek, and behind them the trees open into grass meadows where spotted deer graze in herds at dawn and dusk, watched from a tall wooden tower. Wild boar root along the edges, monkeys crash through the keora, and the guards read the mud for last night's tiger.

The walk is the thing. From the station a path runs about two kilometres through the forest, single file behind the guard, to Jamtola, where the trees simply stop and a wide, flat, white beach runs along the Bay of Bengal with no building, boat or person on it. Red crabs scatter ahead of your feet; tiger tracks sometimes cross the sand. A few kilometres east along the coast is Kochikhali, the other station, with its own beach. Most cruises give you a dawn at the tower and a morning at Jamtola, and it is enough to understand why the whole forest is a World Heritage Site.

Getting there: By cruise launch only, about a day's sailing south from Mongla or Khulna through the Pasur and the forest channels.