There’s a Seductive and Pristine Quality to Sri Lanka’s Blue-green Southern Coast. Two New Anantara Resorts Book a Curve of This Coast and Offer a Spectacular Way to Experience the Destination. Ruchira Bose and Anwesha Sanyal Go Their Separate Ways to Discover How They Do This.
ANANTARA PEACE HAVEN TANGALLE
If you arrive in the evening in Colombo, the drive down on the snazzily built multi-lane Southern Expressway is a gorgeous moonlit ride through dark emerald green plantations on both sides, leading into Matara, where you pass neat and tidy hamlets, and a last stretch of road that runs alongside a coastline with luminous white waves rolling in from an inky Indian ocean. By day, this drive is just a feast of pantone colours—from the slate grey curvy expressway, tangerine orange sari-clad and chocolate-skinned pretty Lankan ladies standing in doorways of houses with bright blue walls, to cool canopied palm forests, tender green paddy fields, wagon-red tuk tuks and that incredible Indian Ocean out there in all kinds of shades of sea green and sky blue.
Tangalle’s sheltered coconut-palm fringed coves are simply gorgeous. It’s as if Roberto Cavalli designed a destination. It has all the oomph of the heaving Indian Ocean and the luxurious languor of its sun-drenched golden sand. And like a Cavalli creation, not everyone can afford it. Hence, there are no noisy tourist crowds, no tacky stack of low-star hotels, and no peddlers of excursion packages or taxis. In fact, there aren’t too many hotels at all. Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle opened just a year ago with its impressive pool villas, suites and rooms, and its serious commitment to deeper food experiences (the extraordinary Dining By Design concept), and a stellar yoga and spa programme.
This story is from the March 2017 edition of Travel+Leisure India.
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This story is from the March 2017 edition of Travel+Leisure India.
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