Driving Sri Lanka's South Coast: A Three Day Road Trip

The southern expressway gets you from Colombo to Galle in ninety minutes and it is useful but it is not the drive. The coast road, the old A2, takes three hours without stops and approximately a lifetime with them, and it is one of the most visually rewarding stretches of road in the country: fishing villages, coconut groves, the railway running beside the sea, small temples on headlands above the water, beach after beach, some with names and signs and some without either.

Leave Colombo at 6am. The city traffic is manageable at that hour and by the time you reach Kalutara the sun is up properly and the light on the river estuary is worth stopping for. Beruwala and Bentota follow: good beaches, the Bentota River lagoon, Geoffrey Bawa's Lunuganga estate on the southern bank accessible by boat or road for those who have booked in advance.

Ambalangoda is the mask carving town with its own museum and workshops worth an hour. Hikkaduwa is where the surf culture began and the reef snorkelling is still the best on the west coast. Then Galle, which deserves its own time and should be where you spend night one of the three days rather than just a lunch stop.

Continue east from Galle through Unawatuna, Koggala, Ahangama, and Weligama before reaching Mirissa for night two. The final day takes you through Matara, the southernmost major town, and along the increasingly quiet coast road to Tangalle and then further east towards Hambantota and the entrance to the dry zone. The landscape shifts visibly as you go: wetter and greener in the southwest, drier and more austere as you move east. Three days from Colombo to Hambantota is the south coast in full.