Bentota Travel Guide: River, Beaches & Safari Day Trips

Bentota does the west coast's resort life properly: a wide golden beach on one side of a sandspit, a calm river lagoon on the other, and two of the island's best-loved gardens a short drive inland. Couples and families come for a comfortable week of swimming, river trips and long lunches, while backpackers and surfers usually push on to Hikkaduwa or further south.

Think of Bentota as a winter-sun beach. From about November to April the sea is calm and swimmable. From May to September the south-west monsoon sends big waves and strong currents onto the beach, and red flags are common.

One more thing up front: of all the beach towns on the south-west coast, Bentota is the furthest from the safari parks. A day trip to Udawalawe works, but it's a long day, and Yala is better saved for when you travel east. More on that below.

Bentota at a glance

• The beach: long, wide and sandy, running south from the river mouth through Bentota and Induruwa.
• The river: the Bentota Ganga meets the sea here, giving you a calm lagoon for boat trips and water sports.
• The gardens: Brief Garden and Lunuganga, made by the Bawa brothers, are each within about half an hour.
• The mood: resorts, Ayurveda spas and quiet evenings rather than nightlife.
• Getting there: about 2¼ hours from the airport, or a coastal train ride from Colombo.

Things to do in Bentota

• Swim and laze. In season the sea is gentle enough for swimming on most days, and the beach is wide enough that it rarely feels crowded. Swim where lifeguards are posted.
• Water sports on the lagoon. Operators along the river offer jet skis, banana boats, water-skiing and windsurfing on flat water, which makes it a good place to try something new.
• A Bentota river safari. Small boats head upstream into the mangroves, where monitor lizards are common, kingfishers flash past and a crocodile is possible. It's a shorter, closer alternative to the Madu River.
• Kande Vihara, a short tuk-tuk ride away in Aluthgama: a hilltop temple dating back to the 1730s, watched over by a 48.8-metre seated Buddha, one of the tallest in the world. Cover your shoulders and knees, take off your shoes and hat, and don't pose with your back to the statue.
• Ayurveda. Bentota is full of Ayurveda resorts and spas. For anything longer than a massage, look for a centre with a resident Ayurvedic doctor.
• Day trips. Hikkaduwa's reef and turtles are about 45 minutes south, and Galle Fort about 1¼ hours.

Madu River, Brief Garden and Lunuganga

Madu River boat safari

About half an hour south at Balapitiya, the Madu River widens into a lake scattered with mangrove islands. It has been a Ramsar wetland of international importance since 2003, and a boat trip through its channels makes an easy half-day outing from Bentota.

A standard trip lasts around 1½ to 2 hours. Expect mangrove tunnels, herons, kingfishers and monitor lizards, a stop on an island where families still peel cinnamon by hand, and a visit to Kothduwa, a Buddhist temple on its own island. Go in the morning, when the birds are busier and the heat is gentler, and tell the boatman if you'd rather skip a stop or slow down.

Brief Garden

Bevis Bawa, Geoffrey's older brother, spent decades turning a family rubber estate about 10 km inland into a garden of terraces, statues and shady paths. It has been open to visitors since 1969, with sculptures and artworks dotted through the garden and the bungalow. The Australian painter Donald Friend came to stay for a week and ended up staying about five years, which tells you something about the place.

Brief opens daily from morning until late afternoon, and you pay a modest entry fee at the gate. Allow an hour or so, and bring mosquito repellent.

Lunuganga

Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka's most celebrated architect, bought an old rubber estate on the Dedduwa lake in 1948 and kept reshaping it until his death in 2003. Lunuganga is the result: a series of garden rooms, long views and pavilions that feel like a slow walk through his ideas.

The gardens are shown on guided tours at 11 am, 2 pm and 3 pm daily, with no booking needed. At the time of writing, foreign visitors pay USD 20, by cash or card. There's a lakeside restaurant, and you can stay the night. Expect steps, slopes and uneven paths. If you love Bawa's work, you can see both gardens in a day.

Choosing an ethical turtle hatchery

The coast just south of Bentota, around Kosgoda, is lined with turtle hatcheries, and most tours offer a stop at one. Some do real conservation work, protecting eggs from poaching and treating injured turtles. But studies of Sri Lanka's hatcheries have found that most are run mainly for tourists, and many keep hatchlings in tanks for days so visitors can see them. That's bad for the turtles: hatchlings burn the energy reserve they need to swim out to sea, and crowded tanks with dirty water only add to the risks.

Before you pay, look for these signs.

Good signs

• Eggs are incubated in a fenced patch of natural beach sand.
• Hatchlings go back to the sea within a day of hatching, after dark.
• Nobody lets you handle the babies, and there are no daytime release-a-turtle photo sessions.
• The only turtles in tanks are injured or sick ones being treated, with a plan to release them.
• Staff are happy to explain what they do and why.

Walk away if

• tanks are full of hatchlings that have been there for days;
• you're handed a baby turtle to hold for a photo;
• adult, albino or disabled turtles are kept in small tanks as an attraction;
• releases happen in daylight, on demand, for a fee.

Better still, see turtles in the wild. Green turtles feed off Hikkaduwa's main beach, 45 minutes south, and the community turtle watch at Rekawa, near Tangalle, lets you watch turtles nesting at night on a wild beach. Around Kosgoda the main nesting season runs roughly from October to April.

Where to stay: Bentota, Induruwa, Beruwala

• Bentota: the river mouth and the sandspit between lagoon and sea, with big resorts, boutique hotels, the water-sports operators and the railway station. The obvious first choice.
• Induruwa: just south, on the same long beach with fewer people, smaller hotels and guesthouses, and better value.
• Beruwala: just north, past Aluthgama, with older package resorts along Moragalla beach and a busy fishing harbour.
• Aluthgama: the town across the river from Bentota, with the market, the bigger railway station and cheap guesthouses. Practical rather than pretty.

During the monsoon months many resorts drop their prices, which can make a May or June stay good value if you're happy with pools and gardens rather than sea swimming.

Getting there

• From the airport: about 2¼ hours by private car, mostly on the expressway.
• From Colombo: about 2 hours by car. The coastal train from Colombo Fort is cheap and scenic. Some faster trains stop only at Aluthgama, just across the river, so check which station yours calls at.
• From Hikkaduwa or Galle: about 45 minutes and 1¼ hours by road.
• From Ella or Kandy: about 4½ and 4¼ hours by road. Coming from Ella, an Udawalawe safari on the way makes the drive far more worthwhile.

Safari from Bentota

First, the distances. Udawalawe, the closest park, is about 3 hours away. Yala is nearly 4, and Wilpattu, in the north-west, around 5½, which is why our planner flags Wilpattu as an overnight trip. We'd say the same of Yala unless you're moving east anyway.

Udawalawe is the one to pick. Elephants are very likely on any drive, often whole herds with calves, and the park is open all year. For a round trip, take the morning drive. It means a pickup before 3 am, but you can sleep in the car, you see the park at its best and you're back at your hotel by early afternoon. An afternoon drive starts after a lazy breakfast, but you'd be back around 10 pm, which is a lot of road for one safari.

A sample day: Bentota to Udawalawe to Bentota

Moving on rather than going back? The same safari can end in Ella, Mirissa or Tangalle. With an afternoon drive, you leave Bentota mid-morning, have lunch on the way and arrive in the hills or on the south coast in the evening.

Plan Bentota to Udawalawe to Ella

If a leopard matters more to you than elephants, go to Yala as an afternoon drive and sleep in Tissamaharama, half an hour from the gate. Leopards are possible but never guaranteed, and Yala is much busier with jeeps than Udawalawe.

Best time to visit

• November to April: the dry season on this coast, with calm seas, sunshine and the best swimming. December to March is the peak, and prices rise over Christmas and New Year.
• May to September: the south-west monsoon. Expect rough seas, red flags and heavy showers, with sunny spells in between. The river, the gardens and the spas are as good as ever.
• October: a changeable shoulder month, with inter-monsoon rain.
• Safaris: Udawalawe is open all year. Yala's Blocks 1 and 2 usually close for a few weeks in September–October.