One of the world's top 10 surf breaks — and a leopard walking the beach at dusk
Arugam Bay is a small, crescent-shaped bay on Sri Lanka's east coast that has become one of the most celebrated surf destinations in Asia — its main point break, 'A-Bay', is a long right-hander that works from April to October and draws surfers from around the world during peak season, while remaining genuinely unhurried and cheap compared to equivalent breaks in Indonesia or Australia. The bay is fringed by coconut palms and backed by a small town of surf schools, thambili (king coconut) stalls, and cheap seafood restaurants. What makes the area extraordinary for non-surfers is what surround…
Arugam Bay (historically Arugam Pattu) was a fishing village on what was then the margins of Sri Lanka's Tamil-speaking east. The area suffered catastrophically in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which destroyed much of the bay's infrastructure; the reconstruction — partly funded by surf tourism that had already been growing through the 1990s — created the current character of the town. The civil war (1983–2009) made the east coast essentially inaccessible to tourists for decades, which paradoxically preserved the natural landscape; the national parks around the bay remained undisturbed, and t…