The Bay of Bengal is a bay that forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. It resembles a triangle in shape, and is bordered by India and Sri Lanka to the West, Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal to the North (where the name comes from), and Myanmar, southern part of Thailand and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the East. Its southern boundary extends as an imaginary line from Dondra Head at the southern end of Sri Lanka to the northern tip of Sumatra.
The Bay of Bengal occupies an area of 2,172,000 km². A number of large rivers – Ganges, Brahmaputra, Ayeyarwady, Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna and Kaveri – flow into the Bay of Bengal. Among the important ports are Cuddalore, Chennai, Kakinada, Machilipatnam, Vishakapatnam, Paradip, Kolkata, Chittagong, and Yangon.
