Dublar Char (দুবলার চর)

The island sits where the Sundarbans meets the Bay of Bengal, in the Sundarbans East forest division of Bagerhat district, between Katka to the east and Hiron Point to the west. It has no village of the usual kind. Each winter fishermen from the coastal districts come in by boat and build a temporary town of bamboo and palm-leaf sheds on the sand.

The Rash Mela is held here at the full moon after Kojagari Purnima, usually in late October or November, and lasts three days. Pilgrims bathe in the sea at dawn as part of the ritual, and in some years tens of thousands have attended. The Forest Department controls entry, and in recent years has limited the festival to registered pilgrims on fixed boat routes.

The dried-fish season runs from around October or November to the end of March. Fishermen stay for three to four months, catching loitta, faissa, pomfret, ribbonfish and other sea fish and laying them out on long bamboo racks to dry in the sun. Tens of thousands of workers take part in a season. Much of the catch goes to wholesale markets in Chattogram.

The camp is managed under Forest Department permits, and the government collects revenue on each season's output. Beyond the sheds, the island has open sand, salt grass and mangrove edges where deer tracks are common.

There is no ticket for the island itself, but every visit to the Sundarbans requires a Forest Department permit, a paid guard and a licensed boat, which tour operators in Khulna and Mongla arrange. The cool months are the only practical time to go, and most visitors spend an hour or two ashore. It is a working camp, so stay clear of the racks and ask before photographing anyone.

Size, population and the fishing season swell

Dublar Char covers about 66.5 square kilometres, roughly 15 kilometres long and 5.5 kilometres wide, on the southern edge of the Sundarbans. A population of about 3,000 was recorded in 2020, and the number swells many times over in the fishing season. Fishermen set up their camps at several points on and around the island, including Alorkol and Majher Char.

The scale of the dried fish trade is large. About 35,000 people are directly involved in the work between October and March, coming from Khulna, Bagerhat, Satkhira, Pirojpur, Chattogram and Cox's Bazar. Bombay duck (loitta), ribbon fish, knife fish, shrimp, anchovy and pomfret are the main catches. Production rose from 4,105 tonnes in the 2018 to 2019 financial year, earning the government Tk 26.8 million in revenue, to 5,100 tonnes and Tk 66.8 million in 2022 to 2023.

The Rash Mela is often described as 200 years old, but historical accounts place its start in 1923. It is linked to Haribhajan (1829 to 1923), a devotee of Harichand Thakur who lived in the forest, and it is held over three days in the Bengali month of Kartik around Rash Purnima.