Beach, Chattogram
Guliakhali Beachগুলিয়াখালী সমুদ্র সৈকত
- Time needed
- Two hours.
- best months
- Oct–Mar
- Cost
- Free; a CNG from Sitakunda bazar and back is the only cost.
A beach unlike any other in the country, at Muradpur on the Sitakunda coast: green grass and keora mangroves running in ridges and channels straight into the sea, boats, herons, and a wide sky. Unknown until 2014, now a protected tourism area.
Plan your visit
- Best time
- Late afternoon at low tide, October to March.
At a glance
- Also called
- Muradpur beach
- Protected
- About 259 acres declared a tourism protected area, 2020
- From Sitakunda bazar
- About 5 km west
About
Guliakhali is a stretch of the Sitakunda coast where the river estuary has built a green shore instead of a sandy one: a carpet of grass cut by tidal channels into rounded mounds, scattered keora trees standing in the water, and the Bay beyond. At high tide the channels fill and the mounds become small islands; at low tide you can walk far out across the grass and mud. Fishing boats pull up on the shore and white herons work the shallows.
Almost nobody outside the villages knew it until a group of CUET students posted photographs in 2014. Within a few years it was one of the most photographed places in the district, and in 2020 the government declared about 259 acres of the coastal forest here a protected tourism area. There is still nothing built: no hotels, a few tea stalls at the end of the track, and the sea.
Go for the late afternoon, when the light lies flat across the grass and the boats come in.
Getting there: Bus to Sitakunda bazar, then a CNG west through Muradpur to the end of the track, 20–30 minutes.
Things to do
- Walk out across the grass mounds at low tide and sit by the keora trees for sunset.
Good to know
- Check the tide: the channels fill fast and the mud is deep. Do not swim.
- Take your rubbish back; the grass is what everyone came for.
