Uga Escapes’ Sri Lankan experience

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Sri Lanka’s east coast is a veritable hotbed for beachside havens. Renowned globally for being one of the few sites in the world where blue and humpback whales regularly assemble, Sri Lanka houses a number of vantage points from which to gain access to these remarkable creatures. Jungle Beach, the luxury boutique hotel of Sri Lankan leisure industry group Uga Escapes, regularly facilitates these kinds of unique rendezvous. The prospect of these excursions, together with the comfort and luxury available at the hotel, makes it the perfect choice for travellers heading east on the island. The hotel’s location also positions it as an ideal launch point for a sojourn to the Minneriya National Park, which hosts a dense elephant population and several other exotic species of fauna and flora. This affords guests the opportunity to encounter two of the largest living mammals in the space of a few kilometres. Jungle Beach’s sister hotel, Uga Bay, located in the Batticaloa District’s coastal hub of Passikudah, offers a similarly rare meeting with another behemoth of the big blue sea. Buried deep beneath the bordering ocean’s currents, the HMS Hermes – a British aircraft carrier which Japanese planes sunk during World War II – serves as a hub for amateur and elite divers alike. The HMS Hermes was the world’s first purpose-designed aircraft carrier, which presents a unique proposition for enthusiastic divers seeking a technical challenge while simultaneously exploring the recesses of a rare structure. In addition to wrecks, avid divers also have the option of examining a multitude of coral reefs which line several stretches near the coast. Sri Lanka’s eastern coast houses many distinct and alluring geographical features. These, combined with its cultural diversity, create a number of reasons for tourists to visit the region. And its beauty and solitude, as abundant as the waves that lap its shores, keep them coming back year after year.

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