SWELL TIMES

Palm-tree-lined beaches? Check. Excellent reef breaks? Check. A cool-kid scene complete with surf stays, yoga retreats, and oceanfront cafés? Check, check, check. Sri Lanka's south coast has all the ingredients to become the next great lifestyle destination

- Chandrahas Choudhury

ON a grassy bluff at the southern tip of Sri Lanka, I clasp a negroni, my feet pointing downhill toward the Indian Ocean. Snatches of jazz float into my ears from Cape Weligama's Surf Bar. On the horizon a cluster of roseate clouds match the hue of my drink.

There is traffic on the ocean. Half a dozen surfers use the last light of day to glide balletically into a break created by a headland. These stick figures remind me of fishermen in an old Japanese woodblock print, their histories and identities dissolved by the low light and the immensity of their stage.

But in truth, they only began showing up in any real numbers on the south coast about a decade ago. Between December and April, when the first of Sri Lanka's two monsoon seasons has spent itself and the weather is balmy, this long band of constant arc of about 55 miles from Hikkaduwa in the west to Hiriketiya in the east becomes a cosmopolitan revel-centered around surf culture, with a side of yoga. Sri Lanka had always attracted a small coterie of surfers to Arugam Bay, a highly rated spot on the island's eastern coast. These hardy souls, largely indifferent to political and economic turbulence, were the mainstay of the tourist economy during the civil war that besmirched the lives of an entire generation from the 1980s on. Then, as tourism began to take off again after the end of the war in 2009, the south started to acquire a reputation as a place where beginner and intermediate surfers could make progress. The waves are forgiving here, and the surf season in the Sri Lankan south - unlike in Arugam Bay, where it starts in May-coincides with winter for many potential visitors.