September 2025

Kite Running

With the steady south west monsoon wind blowing across the Indian Ocean, the last three months have been kite flying season. The sky is littered with every shape, size, design and colour of kite, all are home-made from sticks and discarded plastic, and each attached to a gaggle of small boys.  

It is huge fun watching these kite squads arrive on the beach with their creations. Think world title boxing fight when the champion arrives in the arena, arms crossed and head nodding to his audience in grandiose self-approval, surrounded by the support team holding assorted paraphernalia and taking in every ounce of reflected glory. Well, it's no different to when 13-year-old Ranjit arrives at Kabalana beach having escaped school for the day with his posse.  He stands and surveys the opposition with the kite strapped to his back like a gladiator's shield. Little brother Rakeet holds the tail to prevent damage while Kasun and Janith scuffle to hold the repair kit which inevitably is a roll of sellotape. Squad leader always holds the main string spool with his deputies rushing around offering advice while being instructed to retrieve the kite from numerous failed launches.

But, my goodness, some of these creations fly! Height is everything in this contest. If you can get your kite up so high that it is barely a dot in the sky and a hazard to light aircraft so much the better! I once had to assist some boys who were being admonished by the police for flying their kite about 400 feet up in what was the airspace approach corridor to Koggala Military Airbase. But like most young teenage boys, while they had watched with glee the line being ripped off the spool at high speed on the way up, they had given little thought to the practicalities of retrieval. Their thin stick spool was winding back line at a tortuous rate of about a foot a minute. As the police waived their batons with ever increasing anger, the boys looked more and more panic-stricken. Ranjit had managed to slip the spool to a minion and was busy telling the Ahangama Feds how he had been telling his friends all morning that they shouldn't let out too much line. 

August Drought

I spend a lot of time explaining to global travel industry reps that contrary to received wisdom, August is actually one of the driest months on the South Coast. Broadly speaking the second half of July, all of August and the first half of September fall into the inter-monsoon period in which the wind seems to shift slightly from the south west to the west and any rain seems to hit the Western Province (Colombo and surrounds) and fall over the lowland hill band to the north. It generally misses the South Coast.

We wear two hats at Tekanda. As hoteliers we want all our guests to have cloudless tropical days punctuated by only the rustle of a gentle breeze through palms. But with my Tekanda Estate hat on,  I silently yearn for periods of steady rain 2-3 times a week. I can certainly say that 2025 has been a triumph for the hotel guests and more problematic for the estate.  In the six week period  between the 17th July and the 25th August (neatly encapsulating all of the European summer holidays), it rained five times at Tekanda for a combined total of about 7 hours. The estate team were having to irrigate the kitchen garden, the newly planted fruit orchard and the first raft of flowers, shrubs and trees in our new botanical garden (more on that next time..!). As a result our well was taking extra strain and is currently down to late March/early April levels. So if anyone tells you that European summer holidays is not the time to visit the South Coast of Sri Lanka - point them my way!

Forward bookings 

Forward availability has become a bit of an issue for us at Tekanda Lodge. This is being driven largely by the world waking up to the fact that Sri Lanka really does offer the most wonderful holidays and most hotels of a decent standard are being lifted by the same tide. But it's also because Tekanda Lodge is very small! So just a general heads up that if you are considering coming to Sri Lanka between December and April or mid July to the end of August then regardless of whether you plan on staying with us, you should be booking nowfor summer and winter 2026/7.

There is still a shortage of really good boutique hotels in Sri Lanka and they all tend to book up very quickly. The alternative is to look at September, October and November, late April and May. These are periods with superb prices, a fraction of the people and you still have a better than average chance of getting lots of sunshine. As always, if you want any help with planning a trip or some pointers on what to expect when - please just shout even if you are not planning to stay at Tekanda.