Bentota River, beach and the Bawa gardens, an easy 2 hours from the airport

Where to stay in Bentota

Things to do from Bentota

• Dining · up to about 5 hours with a market visit; a demonstration alone is shorterA Sri Lankan cookery lesson with your hotel's chefSeveral of the lodges and hotels around Negombo and Bentota teach Sri Lankan cooking, arranged with your stay. Some keep to a demonstration by the chef of the curries served at the hotel's own table; others are hands-on, from a village-style class where the guest picks the ingredients and cooks them to a lesson in rice and curry, its spices and its traditional ingredients.
• Wellness · a morning or evening session, or daily through a stayYoga and meditation with your stay on the west coastSeveral of the hotels around Negombo and Bentota hold yoga and meditation for their guests, arranged with your stay. The settings range from an open-sided yoga pavilion in a garden to the beach at dawn, and the classes suit all levels, with a focus on posture, alignment and breathing.
• Culture and heritage · 30 minutes to 1 hour at each templeThe temples of Bentota and Aluthgama: Galapata and Kande ViharaGalapata Raja Maha Vihara, by the Bentota river, is an old temple whose rock inscription of the 12th or 13th century, cut beside the steps, records its building, and whose stone gateway of 2 monolithic pillars is carved with flower motifs in the Kandyan style. Its stupa is said to hold a relic of the monk Maha Kassapa, and its image houses are painted with Jataka stories.
• Culture and heritage · 1 to 2 hours, about 22 km north of BentotaThe hollow stupa and sacred Bodhi tree at KalutaraKalutara, about 22 km north of Bentota on the coast road, is known for its Bodhi tree, believed to be one of the 32 saplings of the sacred Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi at Anuradhapura, which grows beside the Kalu river just south of the town. Beside it stands the Kalutara Chaitya, a white stupa begun in 1964 and topped out in 1974, one of only a few hollow stupas in the world.
• Culture and heritage · about 1 hour, with a guideRichmond Castle, an Edwardian mansion on the Kalu riverRichmond Castle is an Edwardian mansion on a hill above the Kalu river at Palatota, 2 km from Kalutara, which is itself about 22 km north of Bentota. It was built in the early 20th century for Mudaliyar Don Arthur de Silva Wijesinghe Siriwardena, a local landowner and philanthropist, to a plan copied from a palace in India, with floor tiles from Italy, Burmese teak for the main staircase and window glass from Scotland decorated with grapevines.
• Water and coast · 30 to 45 minutes by glass-bottomed boat, longer to snorkelThe coral reef of Hikkaduwa National ParkHikkaduwa National Park, 17 km north-west of Galle and about 33 km south of Bentota, is one of the island's 3 marine national parks: a shallow fringing reef with an average depth of about 5 m, where 60 species of coral and more than 170 species of reef fish have been recorded. Hawksbill, green and olive ridley turtles visit the reef, and blacktip reef sharks keep to its outer slope.
• Culture and heritage · a short stop on the coast road, just north of HikkaduwaThe tsunami memorial at PeraliyaOn 26 December 2004 the tsunami struck the coast at Peraliya, just north of Hikkaduwa, and swept a crowded train, the Matara Express from Colombo, off its tracks, killing at least 1,000 people and possibly as many as 1,700, in what is considered the largest rail disaster in history. The village itself lost all but 10 of its buildings.
• Culture and heritage · a guided garden tour at 11:00, 14:00 or 15:00, with lunch if wantedLunuganga, Geoffrey Bawa's country gardenLunuganga is the country estate of the architect Geoffrey Bawa, a former cinnamon and rubber plantation of about 25 acres on the banks of the Dedduwa lake near Bentota. He bought it in the late 1940s and reshaped it for 40 years, until his death in 2003, into a garden of walkways, terraces and lake views, with works by artists such as Donald Friend and Laki Senanayake.
• Culture and heritage · about 1 hour, 11 km inland from BentotaBrief, Bevis Bawa's gardenBrief is the garden and former home of the landscape designer Bevis Bawa, older brother of Geoffrey, begun in 1929 on the family's rubber plantation at Kalawila, 11 km inland from Bentota. He worked on it until his death in 1992, and it is still looked after by the people who worked for him.
• Adventure · an hour or a morning, as wantedWater sports on the Bentota river and coastBentota sits where the Bentota river meets the sea, and both the sheltered estuary and the open coast are used for water sports. Jet skiing, water skiing, speedboat rides, windsurfing, kitesurfing and canoeing are all offered, along with slower boat cruises upriver.
• Wellness · a day of treatments, or a programme of 7 days or moreAn Ayurveda programme on the west coastSri Lanka's Ayurveda follows the same Sanskrit texts as India's but differs in the herbs it uses, and it is regulated by the state, with about 20,000 registered practitioners. The Bentota and Beruwala coast is one of the island's main centres for Ayurveda retreats.
• Culture and heritage · about 1.5 hours, 22 km south of BentotaThe mask carvers of AmbalangodaAmbalangoda, on the coast road between Bentota and Galle, is known for hand-carved wooden masks made for 3 traditions: kolam dance dramas that mock colonial-era life, sanni masks for healing rituals, and raksha masks for festivals and processions. The masks are carved from light kaduru wood, smoke-dried for a week, then painted by hand.