Trincomalee gets the visitors. It has the harbour, the whale sharks, the colonial fort, the long white beaches of Nilaveli. It earns its reputation. But two hours further south along the eastern coast sits Batticaloa, a lagoon city of considerable character and almost no tourist infrastructure, which is either a problem or a recommendation depending on the kind of traveller you are.
Batticaloa is built on islands in a lagoon system that stretches for kilometres in every direction, connected by causeways and bridges, its streets ending abruptly at the water’s edge in a way that makes the town feel perpetually provisional, as though the lagoon might reclaim it at any moment. The Dutch fort at the lagoon entrance has been standing since 1628. The Tamil Hindu temple culture of the surrounding villages is among the most vivid and unperformed on the island. The eastern beaches between Batticaloa and Arugam Bay are long and empty and largely unknown. And in the lagoon itself, on certain nights around the full moon, a phenomenon occurs that has been documented since the 17th century and is still not entirely explained.
Six days here will show you an east coast that exists entirely beyond the reach of the standard itinerary.
Day 1 – Arriving in Batticaloa
The drive from Colombo to Batticaloa takes around six hours via the expressway and the Mahiyanganaya road, passing through the central highlands and the dry zone before dropping to the flat coastal plain of the east. The approach to Batticaloa from the west crosses the lagoon on a long causeway, the water visible on both sides, the town appearing gradually through the heat haze as a low skyline of water towers and temple gopurams.
Arrive in the afternoon and walk the lagoon front before the light goes. The eastern shore of the main lagoon, where the fishing boats are drawn up on the bank and the nets are spread to dry on the grass, has a working waterfront quality that is entirely unmodified for visitors. The boats here are a distinctive eastern design, narrow and high-prowed, built for the lagoon conditions rather than the open sea. The fishermen who maintain them do so with the careful attention of people who understand that their livelihood depends on the quality of the wood and the tightness of the caulking.
For accommodation, Riviera Resort on the lagoon edge is the most comfortable mid-range option in Batticaloa, with good water views and a helpful staff who understand what visitors want to do in the area. For budget travellers, several clean guesthouses along Lloyds Avenue offer simple rooms at reasonable prices within walking distance of the fort and the lagoon front.
Day 2 – The Dutch Fort and the Lagoon Islands
The Batticaloa Fort was built by the Portuguese in 1628 and taken by the Dutch in 1638, who expanded and strengthened it into its current form. It sits on a small island at the entrance to the lagoon, connected to the town by a bridge, its coral-block walls still largely intact after nearly four centuries of tropical weather and periodic conflict. The Sri Lanka government currently uses part of the fort as an administrative building, which means entry requires a polite request at the gate rather than a ticket, and the interior has the slightly improvised quality of a historic monument being used for practical purposes.
The fort is worth an hour of careful walking. The views from the ramparts across the lagoon entrance and out to the sea beyond are excellent, and the construction detail of the walls, the coral blocks laid with a precision that has kept them standing through several significant earthquakes, rewards close inspection.
In the afternoon, arrange a boat trip on the lagoon. The Batticaloa Lagoon is one of the largest in Sri Lanka, its shallow waters broken by islands and mangrove channels and the occasional sandbank that appears and disappears with the tides. The lagoon islands support small fishing communities whose way of life is among the most isolated on the east coast, connected to the town by boat rather than road and maintaining a domestic economy that is almost entirely organised around the water.
Day 3 – The Singing Fish
The phenomenon known as the singing fish of Batticaloa has been documented since at least the 17th century. On certain nights, particularly around the full moon between April and September, a musical sound rises from the lagoon near the Kallady Bridge, audible on the surface and considerably louder when a paddle or oar is held in the water with the ear pressed to the handle. The sound has been variously described as resembling a cello, a swarm of bees, or the distant sound of bells, and its source, whether bivalves, catfish, or some other organism, has never been definitively established.
Take a boat onto the lagoon at night and listen. The experience requires patience and quiet, which means it requires a boatman who understands that the point of the exercise is silence rather than narration. When the sound is present and the night is calm and the lagoon is dark around the boat, it is one of those experiences that sits in the memory as something genuinely strange and genuinely Sri Lankan, the kind of thing that happens here and nowhere else and that no amount of explanation quite accounts for.
Spend the day before the evening boat trip exploring the market town. The Batticaloa market, particularly the early morning fish section, is one of the most lively and photogenic in the east, the variety of lagoon and sea fish reflecting the richness of the surrounding waters. The town’s Tamil Hindu temple culture is visible throughout the market area in the small shrines that anchor each neighbourhood, fresh flowers and oil lamps maintained through the trading day.
Day 4 – The Temple Villages
The villages surrounding Batticaloa have a Hindu temple culture that is among the most vivid and unself-conscious in Sri Lanka. The kovils here are not tourist sites. They are working religious institutions, their festivals organised around the Tamil Hindu calendar, their architecture reflecting a tradition that has been continuous on this coast for over a thousand years.
The Mamangam Festival, held at the Mamangam Temple near Batticaloa, is one of the larger temple festivals of the east coast and draws devotees from across the district in numbers that transform the surrounding village for the duration. Outside of festival season, the temple itself is a beautiful and quietly busy place, the gopuram rising above the surrounding paddy fields with an authority that the flat landscape amplifies rather than diminishes.
Spend the day visiting two or three of the village temples with a local guide who can provide the context that makes the difference between observing a religious practice and beginning to understand it. The guide’s knowledge of which temples are open for visitors at which times, and how to approach them with appropriate respect, is practically essential rather than merely helpful.
For accommodation, remaining at your Batticaloa base for this day makes the most logistical sense, the village temples all being within easy reach of the town by tuk-tuk or hired car.
Day 5 – The Eastern Beaches
The coast between Batticaloa and Arugam Bay, about sixty kilometres to the south, is one of the least visited stretches of beach in Sri Lanka. The road runs close to the shore for much of its length, and the beaches it passes are long, flat, and almost entirely empty outside of the brief Arugam Bay surf season. The sand is white and fine, the water clear, and the absence of development gives the coast a raw, unhurried quality that the more popular beaches of the south and west lost some years ago.
Drive the coast road south in the morning and stop wherever the beach looks good. There are no facilities, no beach chairs, no vendors. Bring water and food from Batticaloa and treat the day as the unstructured beach time it is. The fishing villages along this stretch, small communities of Tamil fishermen whose boats are pulled up above the tide line, are not set up for visitors but are generally welcoming to people who approach with basic courtesy.
The lagoon system continues intermittently along this stretch of coast, and the points where the lagoon meets the sea through narrow channels are particularly beautiful, the two bodies of water meeting in a turbulence of currents that draws birds in large numbers.
Day 6 – The Return and the Lagoon Farewell
Use the final morning for a last hour on the lagoon before the drive back. The Batticaloa Lagoon in the early morning, before the wind picks up and the fishing boats begin their return, has a stillness that is the best possible way to end a journey that has been, throughout, defined by water.
The drive back to Colombo via Kandy takes around seven hours and passes through the full range of Sri Lankan landscapes in a single day, from the flat coastal plain of the east through the dry zone interior and then the dramatic climb into the central highlands before the descent to the western coast. It is a long day but a rewarding one, the landscape changing significantly every hour and the variety of it serving as a reminder of how much this small island contains within its borders.
Stop in Kandy for dinner before the final stretch to Colombo. After six days on the east coast, the hill-country city feels like a different country, which in many ways it is.
Where to Stay
In Batticaloa, Riviera Resort is the best mid-range option with good lagoon positioning and helpful staff. Budget travellers are well served by the guesthouses along Lloyds Avenue, which offer clean, simple accommodation at reasonable prices within easy walking distance of the fort and the lagoon front. For the night spent exploring the southern beaches, small guesthouses in Kalmunai, roughly halfway between Batticaloa and Arugam Bay, provide a basic but convenient base.
