Hikkaduwa

Why Visit

One of the easiest places in Sri Lanka to see coral and reef fish without a boat, alongside a lively beach and surf scene.

A south coast beach town with a shallow coral reef close to shore, popular for both snorkelling and surfing in the same stretch of coast.

History

Hikkaduwa was, like much of the south coast, a quiet fishing and coconut-farming area for most of its history. It became one of Sri Lanka's earliest international tourism destinations starting in the 1960s and 70s, when travellers on the overland "hippie trail" between Europe and Asia, along with early surfers and divers, began arriving in growing numbers, drawn by the reef just offshore and by word of mouth about its beach scene. That early start gave it a longer, more built-up tourism history than most other beach towns on the island — its reef was declared a marine sanctuary in 1979, one of the first such protections in the country — and it suffered accordingly severe damage in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which struck this low-lying coastline directly. The town has rebuilt substantially in the two decades since, alongside continued efforts to protect the reef from the pressures of the tourism it helped create.