Aluthgama (sri lanka)

Aluthgama and Around 

Dividing Beruwala from Bentota, the lively little town of ALUTHGAMA offers a welcome dose of everyday life amidst the big resorts, and remaing refreshingly unaffected by the local package tourist trade. The main street is a colorful succession of trades:a fish market straggles up its wets side, with all sorts of seafood lined up on benches supervised by machete-wielding fishmongers, while at the south end of the road, local ladies flog great piles of lurid, factory-made cloth.
Aluthgama other attraction is its good and relatively cheap selection of guest houses; these place aren't actually on the beach, but just behind it at the edge of the beautiful lagoon at the mouth of the Bentota River-in many ways just as attractive a location as the oceanfront especially at night, when the lights of the northern Bentota resorts twinkle prettily in the darkness across the waters. A couple of guest houses have their own boats to shuttle you quickly across the lagoon to the beach opposite, depositing you on spit of land known as paradise island otherwise it's a ten-minute walk, or a quick tuk-tuk ride ,to the nearest section of beach at benthota....


Around Aluthgama : brief gardens

j bawa desing  ab out 10km inland from aluthgama. the idyllic brief gardens comprise the former hose and sorrounding estate of the writer and artist bewis bawa, j bawaelder brother of architect geoffrey bawa - the name alludes to bawa,s father , who purchased the land the landwith the money raised from a successful legal brafe devis bawa began land-scaping the five acre gardens in 1929 and continued to work on them almost up untill his death in 1992,creating a series of terraces which tumble luxuriantly down the hillside below the house.the garden are nice for a stoll,but the main attraction is the house,a low-slung orange buiding stufferd with quirky artworks,some by bawa himselfs; several pieces are by the australian artist Donald freng,who came to brief for a week's visit an ended staying five and half years. exibits include collonial furniture and a fantastic collection of photograph of the imposing bawa himself,both as a young man serving as a major the British army and  as one of sri lanka's leading social luminaries,posing with house just such as laurence olivier and viven leigh.the return journey from aluthgama by tuk-tuk,including an hours waiting time,should cost
Rs 400-500.avoid visiting at weekend,when the place gets overrun.