The best places to visit along Sri Lanka's south coast

Sri Lanka's south coast is usually taken to start at Bentota, about 65 kilometres south of Colombo, and to end near Kirinda, at the edge of Yala National Park. Between the two, the A2 coast road runs roughly 200 kilometres through Hikkaduwa, Galle, Weligama, Matara, Tangalle and Hambantota, with the sea on one side for most of the way.

The character of the coast changes from west to east. The western stretch is wet, green and busy, with resort hotels and the railway alongside the road. Past Matara the land dries, the towns thin out, and from Hambantota onwards the scrub and lagoons of the dry zone take over. The best places to visit sit along that whole gradient, not only on the famous middle section.

The places below are the ones most worth building a south coast trip around, listed in the order the coast road meets them. Several are single sights that need an hour, and a few deserve a day. Each has its own page in this series, and the beaches themselves are covered in a separate guide.

A first trip rarely fits all of them. Choose two or three from each end of the coast, and give Galle Fort the most time, since it is the one place on the list that rewards an overnight stay inside the walls.

The south coast's temples are its most overlooked places to visit. Yatagala Raja Maha Viharaya, a few kilometres inland from Unawatuna, is a monastery built among granite boulders with a reclining Buddha and old murals. Weherahena at Matara has a tunnel of painted Jataka stories beneath a huge seated Buddha.

Mulkirigala, roughly 16 kilometres north of Tangalle, is the finest of them: a rock rising about 200 metres from the paddy fields, with cave shrines on five terraces linked by several hundred steps. Wewurukannala at Dikwella is the most dramatic, its giant Buddha visible from the main road. Each of the four needs one to two hours and modest clothing.

The south coast's nature lies mostly a short drive inland or at its dry eastern end. Kottawa and the larger Kanneliya Forest Reserve, both within about an hour of Galle, are lowland rainforest with endemic birds and streams. Koggala Lake, close to the beach, has mangrove islands reached by small boat.

East of Tangalle, Kalametiya lagoon is a bird sanctuary best seen by canoe at dawn, and Ussangoda National Park is a plateau of red earth above the sea, tied in local legend to the Ramayana. Bundala National Park, beyond Hambantota, adds flamingos in the northern winter and leads straight on to Yala.

The best places along Sri Lanka's south coast fit into four to five days without rushing. Two days cover Galle Fort and the stretch to Mirissa. A third adds Matara, Wewurukannala and the Hummanaya blowhole, and a fourth or fifth reaches Mulkirigala, Kalametiya and Ussangoda, or turns back west to Bentota and Ambalangoda.

Driving times are short on the map and slower on the road. The coast road crawls through every town, so most travellers use the Southern Expressway for long hops and the coast road only between nearby stops. Allow about an hour from Galle to Mirissa, and roughly 45 minutes from Mirissa to Dikwella.

The south coast is calmest and driest from roughly December to April, when the sea is good for swimming and whale-watching boats run from Mirissa. From May to September the south-west monsoon brings rain and rough water, but the temples, museums, forests and Galle Fort all remain worth visiting, and the Hummanaya blowhole is at its most powerful.

The easiest south coast routes use one or two bases rather than a new hotel every night, with a driver who knows which stops to take before the heat and which to leave for late afternoon. Linking the coast to Yala in the east or to the hill country through Ella is the most common way to fit it into a longer trip.