The Other Blue Ocean Strategy

There’s a Seductive and Pristine Quality to Sri Lanka’s Blue-green Southern Coast. Two New Anantara Resorts Book a Curve of This Coast and Offer a Spectacular Way to Experience the Destination. Ruchira Bose and Anwesha Sanyal Go Their Separate Ways to Discover How They Do This.
 

- Ruchira Bose and Anwesha Sanyal

ANANTARA PEACE HAVEN TANGALLE

If you arrive in the evening in Colombo, the drive down on the snazzily built multi-lane Southern Expressway is a gorgeous moonlit ride through dark emerald green plantations on both sides, leading into Matara, where you pass neat and tidy hamlets, and a last stretch of road that runs alongside a coastline with luminous white waves rolling in from an inky Indian ocean. By day, this drive is just a feast of pantone colours—from the slate grey curvy expressway, tangerine orange sari-clad and chocolate-skinned pretty Lankan ladies standing in doorways of houses with bright blue walls, to cool canopied palm forests, tender green paddy fields, wagon-red tuk tuks and that incredible Indian Ocean out there in all kinds of shades of sea green and sky blue.

Tangalle’s sheltered coconut-palm fringed coves are simply gorgeous. It’s as if Roberto Cavalli designed a destination. It has all the oomph of the heaving Indian Ocean and the luxurious languor of its sun-drenched golden sand. And like a Cavalli creation, not everyone can afford it. Hence, there are no noisy tourist crowds, no tacky stack of low-star hotels, and no peddlers of excursion packages or taxis. In fact, there aren’t too many hotels at all. Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle opened just a year ago with its impressive pool villas, suites and rooms, and its serious commitment to deeper food experiences (the extraordinary Dining By Design concept), and a stellar yoga and spa programme.