Four weeks in Sri Lanka: Charming small towns, surfing, and sea turtles

After the teaching period in Nepal is finished, you as a student with Kulturstudier get the opportunity to travel for two weeks to Sri Lan

I myself stayed there for almost four weeks, and in this blog post I’ll tell you a bit about the different beaches and places we visited.

6. februar 2026|Tuva

This text is translated using AI.

View the original article here.

Sri Lanka is a tropical island south of India that has so much to offer!

Everything from long, sprawling beaches and surfing for all levels to tasty food, palm trees, and wildlife. After 10 weeks in Nepal, where the autumn temperatures had really set in, it was so wonderful to come back to the warmth and, not least, to see the ocean again!

Falling asleep to the sound of waves. Eating seafood. Something like the ice cream truck, only with baked goods driving around to the tune of a slightly off-key “Für Elise.” Dogs barking, roosters crowing.

Sunset over a beach with crashing waves and a line of silhouetted palm trees.

All the students were booked into the same hostel for two weeks in the town of Weligama. There were lots of different cafés where we could work on our exams, but the town is best known for its beach life and surfing.

That’s why we often started our days with surf lessons – all we had to do was show up at the beach, which is full of surf schools, and we could rent both boards and instructors.

After the two weeks, a friend and I rented our own place to live a short drive away, on a beach called Coconut Beach. It was a wonderful contrast to the slightly busy Weligama, because out here it was so peaceful and remote, and there was hardly any traffic!

A stone fort wall topped with green grass, a lighthouse, and white buildings along a coastline under a cloudy sky.

At Coconut Beach there are powerful waves for more experienced surfers (which did not include us, as we were surfing for the first time) and a beautiful white beach with palm trees. There were also the most stunning sunsets here, and not least wild turtles in the sea!

So if you’re tempted to swim with turtles, this is a great place to go, unless you’d rather pay hundreds of Norwegian kroner to do the same thing at possibly somewhat unethical turtle reserves.

Breakfast on a table, framed by palm leaves, overlooking a sunny beach with people, umbrellas, and ocean waves.

Several of us rented scooters so it was easier to get around the island and do a bit of exploring on our own. Along the entire coastline there are many small towns, each with its own unique vibe, so it’s fun to check out several of them.

Fortunately, the distances are short, so it also works perfectly well to have a base in one place and go on day trips by bus, tuk-tuk, or scooter.

After two weeks in Weligama, the journey continued to the charming town of Hiriketiya. It felt much more compact and intimate, as the streets are much narrower and more crowded, and the town itself is situated in a bay.

A white plate filled with stir-fried rice vermicelli, surrounded by cooked prawns, mixed vegetables, and a dark chili condiment.

Even though this was very nice, at that point I was in great need of some time alone and chose to move to Dickwella Beach.

This is a much calmer and less visited place, but it’s only a 15-minute walk from Hiriketiya, which suited me perfectly. That’s what I liked so much about these different towns; there was one for every individual need.

The last place I stayed in Sri Lanka was called Tangalle, and this was another charming spot with a long beach and cozy cafés.

A herd of elephants, including young ones, in a sunny, grassy landscape with large, gnarled trees and puddles of water under a blue sky.

While a friend and I were sitting eating breakfast, the waiter invited us to join a paddle trip in a nearby lagoon. We couldn’t say no to that!

So just before sunset we paddled out in kayaks and paddled around the lagoon – through channels and tunnels of trees. The trees that grow here actually had trunks so strong that they stopped much of the water that came with the 2004 tsunami and saved large parts of the town!

During our stay, the island was hit by a cyclone, which claimed many lives and caused extensive damage to the infrastructure.

A wide sandy beach with gentle waves, palm trees lining the shore, and a few people scattered along the coast under a clear sky.

The geographical location means that, unfortunately, this is not a rare phenomenon here. Because of this, our travel route was changed, and we stayed in the southern part of the country along the coast the whole time, since this area was not affected by the cyclone.

We made this choice both for safety reasons and because we didn’t want to overload the capacity in the inland and the north during the reconstruction after the cyclone. That’s why we didn’t visit the well-known places like Ella, Kandy and Adam’s Peak this time.

A rainbow arches over a tropical landscape with palm trees, a white building, and the ocean in the distance.

What we did get to experience towards the end of our stay, however, was a safari in Yala National Park. We were picked up just before sunrise and spent a few hours driving around the park, which had very fascinating nature.

Here we got to see many kinds of animals, including elephants and crocodiles – and we even caught a brief glimpse of a leopard that was lying asleep up in a branch!