Kuakata Beach is eighteen kilometres of shore bulging into the Bay of Bengal in the Patuakhali district of southern Bangladesh, a beach wide and open enough that in winter the sun both rises and sets over water from the same sand, and it is walked at dusk with the fishing fleet coming in, at low tide among sheets of red crabs and at the eastern end into a forest that the sea has entered. The sunset is the reliable half of the beach's promise, since every clear evening the sun drops straight into the bay behind the boats, and only in the deep of winter, December above all, does it rise far enough south to clear open water as well, the claim that gives the beach its name of the daughter of the sea; the beach was named by the Rakhine, Buddhists who came from Arakan two centuries ago and dug the wells, kua, that gave the place its name, and are now a minority on it, with their monastery and their weaving in the village behind. Herds of buffalo are walked down from the inland villages at low tide to feed on the seaweed stranded by the retreating sea, and thousands of red crabs come out of the sand on the quiet stretches away from Zero Point and spread in moving red sheets across the flats.
At the eastern end the tide has come into the trees at Gangamati, a plantation of kewra and mangrove that the sea is taking at roughly a hundred acres a year, the dead trunks lying on the sand where the shore has moved, and the char beyond it is a declared sanctuary for the crabs and for the olive ridley turtles that nest through the cool months, though the enforcement has faltered. The fishermen's boats are painted and high-prowed, and the dried fish are sold on racks by the road. Kuakata is a beach that watches the sun both ways, and the sea is taking the forest at its end.