Surfin' Safari

In a unique location in Sri Lanka, a new lodge bridges beach and forest

- Charlotte Sinclair

At the south-eastern corner of Sri Lanka, spreading inland from the coastline, green hills rise from jungled interiors at such regular intervals that the horizon resembles a cardiograph. Each hillock is stacked with smooth lozenges of rock, upon which ancient stupas decay and leopards climb to survey the panorama. Much of this land is dedicated to Yala National Park and it is within the park’s adjacent buffer zone that Sri Lankan hotelier Malik Fernando has sited his latest opening, Wild Coast Tented Lodge, under his Resplendent Ceylon label.

The property, five-and-a-half hours’ drive or a 30-minute seaplane flight from Colombo, occupies an acreage of jungle, fronted by dunes and wave-bashed inlets. It is the beach, a rarely encountered facet of safari, that lends this spot its unique aspect: guests can voyage by boat to where blue whales can be seen.