Inani Beach tide times

Inani Beach is a section of the Cox's Bazar continuous beach strand, 25 kilometres south of the main Cox's Bazar town development, separated from the tourist-dense Laboni Beach area by a stretch of road and rice paddy behind the beach ridge. The distance keeps Inani quieter than the town beaches — the density of beach-front businesses, horse-cart operators, and tourists that characterises Laboni is absent. On weekdays outside school holidays, Inani is essentially undisturbed.

The tidal regime is the same as the wider Cox's Bazar beach: semidiurnal with a spring range of approximately 3 to 4 metres at this latitude (slightly less than at the town, 25 kilometres north, because the bay geometry is slightly different along the coast). At low water springs, the Inani sandflat exposes 300 to 400 metres of firm, wet sand from the upper beach to the low-water mark. At high water springs, the water reaches within 10 to 20 metres of the upper beach edge. The 6-hour transition between these states is the full tidal cycle; the low-water window — roughly 2 to 3 hours centred on low water — is when the beach is widest and most walkable.

The rock formations at the southern end of Inani are the site's distinctive physical feature. At low water, these formations — dark grey-brown indurated sandstone and mudstone outcrops — emerge from the beach flat and extend in a band approximately 100 metres offshore. The rock has been eroded by wave action into irregular shapes with pools that form natural aquaria at low water: small fish, crabs, and molluscs are trapped in the pools as the tide falls. The pools refill on the rising tide, and the wave wash over the rock in the 2 hours before and after low water creates a pattern of splash and swirl across the flat.

The rock pools at Inani are the simplest and most immediately engaging natural history experience on the Cox's Bazar coast. No equipment is needed; a low-water springs visit allows an hour of exploration of the pools and the marine community they contain. Common finds: hermit crabs in various shell sizes, lined chiton (a primitive mollusc), various periwinkle species, small blennies and gobies in the pool interiors, and the occasional starfish in the deeper pool sections.

The beach between the town and Inani is accessible by auto-rickshaw from Cox's Bazar (30 to 40 minutes), CNG (natural-gas three-wheeler), and the local bus service along Marine Drive. The Marine Drive road — a coastal highway running from Cox's Bazar south to Teknaf alongside the beach — passes through Inani and gives access to a series of beach access points along its length. The road has been upgraded in recent years and is now usable at all seasons.

Fishing boats work the beach launch south of Inani on the flood tide, pulling nets in the surf zone for small reef and estuarine fish. The beach launch is low-tech: wooden boats, manually dragged through the surf on the incoming tide, with nets set perpendicular to the shore. The haul from a single net set covers the boat's deck in a few centimetres of small fish — whitebait, small snapper, and various estuarine species.

Predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. Accuracy is typically within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height — model-derived, not from a local gauge. The local tide authority is the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD).