Bentota Bay Beach

Bentota, Sri Lanka, 64 km down from Colombo, is the second tourist resort following Beruwala Bay Beach, 55 km down from Colombo by the same highway, (so we passed it few minutes ago) is the gateway to 140 km (86mile) stretch of tropical beaches from Beruwala in western coast to Tangalla Bay Beach in the southern coast. The outstandingly beautiful stretch of road is one of the most scenic routes in the island.

We just passed the raucous fish market of busy vendors with helpless crabs & lobsters, among a huge variety of fish at Aluthgama. We passed Toddy bars too. Toddy is a creamy white bubbling thick & smooth drink of liquor made of coconut sap (tapped from the frond of coconut) fermented in large clay pots-low percentage alcoholic beverage faintly reminiscent of cider. No hurry, we can have gallons of Toddy later today, at our leisure. Toddy galore in these towns. Cheap too. This is the border between the Western & Southern Provinces.

Bridge over River Bentota
We cross the bridge over the River Bentota by car. The railway track of Diesel engine powered trains shares the same bridge. Over the bridge, over the waters of river Bentota, all of a sudden it is calm now. Did we miss something? We try to have a glance behind the car. We travelled from north to south over the bridge & now unlike us, the River Bentota that was running from east to west while we crossed the bridge suddenly changes its mind & takes a ninety degree turn. Now, the river flows north right from the very location of the bridge itself, parallel to the coast, for a few hundred meters, separated by the sea only by a narrow tongue of land. Sea from the west, sea from the north-the choppy breakers of the Indian Ocean, & calm waters of the river Bentota from East. The narrow spit of land is beautifully sandwiched & shaded with palm trees on both the seaward & river sides. It can be reached either from the beach or by boat across the river: the paradise island.

The Beach
Sprawling under an endless canopy of palm trees, the beaches continue several kilometres south from Bentota. The attractive southern end of Bentota beach, i.e. south of the railway station, comprises a wide & tranquil swathe of sand that's home to one of the island's finest clusters of top-end luxury hotels, tastefully located & set at decent intervals from one another down the coast. Some of the hotels herein provide high quality Ayurvedic healing centres. Some of the most sumptuous places to stay in the entire island are located in these beaches from the resort Bentota to village Induruwa. Induruwa too has a small cluster of places to stay on a lovely, quiet length of beach.

National Resort Complex
It was the British colonialists who first made use of the beach to build a rest house for their officers en route form Colombo to Galle. Today the 100 acre National Resort Complex herein is built entirely for the foreign tourists. A gentle, leafy sprawl of hotels & guest houses along the coast provide a full range of water sports-wind surfing, water-skiing, deep sea fishing, diving. The beautiful calm waters of River Bentota too offers itself ready year round for your merry making in all sorts of water sports along with interesting boat trips up the river. All major hotels provide diving outfits & services.

Water sports, PADI & CMAS courses
Diving the Snake, Paradise Island, Bentota (Swiss management) offers full range of PADI & CMAS courses, plus a wide range of one-off dives at various sites along the west coast.

Club Inter Sport of Bentota beach Hotel (PADI-registered dive instructor) offers water skating, jetskiing, windsurfing, speed boating, deep sea fishing.

Confifi Marina offers full range of dives & courses, snorkelling trips, waterskiing, jet skiing, windsurfing, boat trips, tube-riding & canoeing.

Sunshine Water Sports Centre, Aluthgama offers full range of water sports & particularly good for windsurfing & waterskiing, with training from former Sri Lanka champions. Jet skiing, snorkelling trips, deep-sea fishing & Bentota river cruises.

Ypsylon Dive School offers the usual range of single dives, PADI courses, night dives, introductory "discovery" dives & wreck dives

Boat safaris in River Bentota
Boat trips along the River Bentota are quite popular. The Bentota lagoon is the last section of the broad River Bentota, a popular spot for boat safaris. Starting at the Bentota bridge & cruising inland, soon we will be in the lagoon dotted with tiny islands fringed with tangled mangrove swamps. Among aquatic birds-herons, cormorants & colourful kingfishers - as well as water monitors & crocodiles, the boatmen ferry (Who pay the ferryman? Allow me) us right in the thick of mangroves. The sight is mysterious & beautiful at once, as we cruise through shaded waters beneath huge roots. The longer the cruise, the further upriver we cruise, the more unspoilt the scenery becomes. Longer excursion includes side trip to coconut factories & handicraft shops. Most trips cruise for three hours while the Dinner Cruise last 5 hours. Grilled prawns with garlic butter, steaks, rice & curry & of course, The best dessert in the world, curd with Kitul palm honey.

Turtle hatcheries
At the north end of Induruwa is one of the turtle hatcheries set up to protect turtle eggs till they hatch. Turtle eggs, which would otherwise be eaten, are bought for a few rupees each from local fishermen & re-buried along the beach. Once hatched, the baby turtles are kept in holding tanks. Small tanks contain hundreds of one to three-day old turtles, as well as larger one, including an albino, kept for the collection. In the night, you can release a three-day-old turtle into the Indian Ocean to fend off itself. The beauty of the operation is the beaches are guaranteed the female baby turtles released herein will find their way back, sans GPS, in the depths of seven seas to their natal beach ten years later to lay their own eggs. The wonders & mysteries of our planet are endless. Let's protect it from the poachers, marauders & mass murderers. Five of the world's seven species of marine turtle visit Sri Lanka's beaches to nest, a rare ecological blessing. The government support for the conservation is a far cry from an ideal conservation project for an island that could easily be converted to the world's prime turtle-watching destination. In buying a baby turtle (from privately run turtle hatcheries) so that it could be released to the ocean, your wallet would loose a couple of dollars (let me put it this way: after all, keepers of the hatcheries too spent money buying the eggs from the fishermen, don't they?) to an eminently worthy cause. You would loose A Few Dollars More buying tortoise-shell ware (see, still we aren't saving all of the turtles, still not in the ideal situation), drums, masks & handmade lace. Lace of Portuguese origin, even 15th century Portuguese style ladies jackets made of white lace: Kabakorottu. That's what since15th century coastal belt generation to the generation as my grandmother's (all of them Sinhalese in our western & south-western coastal belt) wore in their times. My father, Baminahennadige Donald Benedict Peiris (8th April 1930 - 24th June 2005) of Lakshapatiya, Moratuwa too used to talk of traditions & costumes of the western coast.

Kosgoda
Independent turtle hatcheries run by villagers & Turtle conservation project (TCP) sponsored by UNDP
Turtle Conservation Project.

Brief Garden
Ten kilometres north of Bentota is pretty Brief Garden. It used to be the home of landscape artist, sculptor & bon-vivant Bevis Bawa, older brother of illustrious Geoffrey Bawa, one of the twentieth century's foremost Asian architects whose work includes the new Parliament, Ruhunu University & renowned top-end eco-friendly hotels, Kandalama Hotel, Bentota Beach Hotel etc. of the island. In 1929 Major Bevis Bawa of British Army in Ceylon began landscaping the 5 acre garden his father had purchased following a successful legal brief. Having cleared the Rubber plantation, Bawa set to work creating a verdant romantic folly of inviting alcoves, nooks & bowers & garden sculpture. Bawa continued his masterpiece to his death in 1992. In the backdrop of undulating landscape of paddy fields & scattered villages on a hillside, Bawa designed a delightful series of cool shady terraces of wonderfully composed views, designed in various moods with references to European & Japanese style gardens, which tumble luxuriantly down the hillside below the house. And then there are wide lawns, ponds & a hilltop lookout too. The house itself wouldn't take a backseat to the garden. The artwork on display is eclectic, ranging form homoerotic sculpture to a wonderful mural of Sri Lankan life in the style of Marc Chagall. Some of the artwork was done by Bawa himself. The mural was created by the Australian artist Donald Friend, who hadn't intended to stay more than six days but ended up staying in Ceylon (then name of Sri Lanka) for six years. The fascinating collection of photographs includes a photograph of Bevis Bawa posing with house guests Vivien Leigh (Gone with the Wind) & Laurence Olivier (Oh! Ah!) during their filming of our Christine Wilson's famous novel "Elephant Walk" in 1953. And Emperor Edward the 8th to the boot.

Geoffrey Bawa himself appear in avatars: here in the form no other than God Bacchus himself, holding a birdbath shaped as a giant clam-shell, there in the shape of water-spouting gargoyle with wild hair & blue marble eyes. Bawa, himself was an imposing character, intellectually, socially as well as physically. He was 6 feet 7 inches tall. That is as tall as South African born former captain of England, fabulous Tony Greg, the most colourful commentator in Cricket today. And impartial too, as is the champion of champions, Illustrious Ravi Shastri of India.