April 15, 2019
By Jason Beaubien
It's high tide in Cox's Bazar and there's a traffic jam right on the beach at Bangladesh's most prominent seaside resort. The lone road that leads south to the sprawling new camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees is closed for repairs. All the traffic has been diverted onto the gray sand beach, where people are taking selfies and strolling in the shallow surf.
Motorized rickshaws get stuck in the sand on the beach
in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. All traffic heading south out of town was
diverted on to the beach when the main road was closed for repairs.
Jason Beaubien/NPR
Little green rickshaws jostle with passenger vans and pickup trucks to get over a sand dune and back onto the paved roadway to head in the direction of the camps. At high tide, some of the vehicles get stuck in the wet sand, blocking those behind them.