The Last Horizon

Shangri-La Hambantota Resort & Spa has claimed a pretty spot on the southern coast of Sri Lanka as a necessary interlude to a quaint little town.

- Anwesha Sanyal

When British novelist James Hilton imagined Shangri-La in Lost Horizon (1933), he described a hidden valley isolated from the rest of the world in the Indo-Chinese Himalayas. Little may he have imagined that more than 80 years down, it would surface somewhere far away in the plains of Sri Lanka. Shangri-La Hambantota Resort & Spa may just be the closest representation of this mystic land, and a hotel I did not expect to stumble upon on my recent trip to the island.

‘Vantage’ quite describes the location of the hotel. Some 240 kilometres from Colombo, this beachfront property enjoys a remarkable seclusion from city life in a sleepy town called Hambantota. The town enscones it from three sides, acting like a guardian safekeeping it from undeserving outsiders and revealing itself only to discerning seekers. When you enter Hambantota, mundane but beautiful sights are set in replay: farmers on the paddy fields, roadside stalls selling fish, and happy, middle-aged homemakers walking on the sidewalks in two’s. When the hotel does appear around a bend off the main road, it is a magnificent sight in warm yellow, with a giant arched entrance opening into an even larger lobby.