The Global Paddling Community

Kayaking in Sri Lanka Enjoy this short report from a tropical island with a big smile, big waves and huge waterfalls.

Sri Lanka is one of the tropical islands that fulfill most if not all expectations for a perfect kayaking holidays.

It is warm and has year round rivers to paddle. Most rivers have easy access and many areas still need to be explored. There's an internationally known surf and the food is great.

After my stint in Tajikistan (apologies to the people still waiting for an update but I am in Sri Lanka now and can't access the pictures from the trip) I busted my knee (meniscus) and had to lay flat for some weeks. This was a good excuse to stay away from boating and do some office work. Once the plaster was removed I was itching to move on to some warm regions and go ahead with my long-term plan to go boating in Sri Lanka.

So I arranged a car in Colombo and picked up Sean with GF from the airport and off we went to do some warm-up surfing before looking at a range of waterfalls from 6 to 20m.

We soon got bored with the surf, as we were expecting huge swells coming in, but there wasn't anything above 1.5-2m. Having a nice tour through the inland with sights of wild elephants and all sorts of birds, snakes, crocs and other known and unknown tropical wildlife, we had a short stint over to Arugam Bay where we hoped to catch some huge storm surf. As those dreams got shattered with a lake-like water surface we immediately started to move on into the mountains.

Sightings of huge waterfalls as well as some run able stretches gave taste and interest for more, especially as some Russian freaks were supposed to arrive and we were set to go out and explore some of the bigger drops together.

Doing some splash on shorter drops (but still exiting as they happened on an unexplored river just above a 130m-drop) I logged my leg completely when I stepped out of my boat. A torn meniscus (so they found out at the surgery in Colombo) was the problem and I will have to stop boating for at least another 14 days.

This was just a short teaser and there will be more on our website as well, as I might get straight into the boat once things look good with my knee and get you some more kayaking from this great spot close to the Equator.

-- Andy Sommer