Visiting Trincomalee

Trincomalee is a port city in the north-east coast of Sri Lanka. This was our second place of stay in our family holiday in Sri Lanka during May 2018. Why had we chosen to go there? Well, my family and I like doing adventurous activities to get different experiences in our holidays. Trincomalee was chosen so as to have water-based activities; scuba-diving, snorkelling, beaches, whale and dolphin-watching. Also as the Monsoon season had started in Sri Lanka choosing a place on the east coast would minimise the chance of encountering Monsoon rains.

We stayed in Trincomalee for two nights. We were booked into the Anilana Nilaveli resort, a wonderful beach resort located on Nilaveli beach. The first activity was visiting the Koneswaram Temple, a temple situated on top of Koneswar Malai and dedicated to Lord Shiva.

At the resort, check-in formalities completed and luggage put into our rooms, we all headed to the beach. It was fantastic; pristine, white sand, super clear waters and no-one there but us. It could not have go better. Well, it did; the setting sun brought out different hues in the sky.

Ram from Epic Ocean Adventures, came to meet us in the evening. My daughter had chosen to do the scuba-diving with him after doing research on the internet before the trip. The plan for the next day was finalised. It was to go for dolphin-watching first, then two sessions of scuba-diving. My wife and I would not be scuba-diving. So during the session we would go snorkelling on our own.

Once the sun had set we all decided to go swimming in the pool at the hotel. Again we had both the large pools all to ourselves. This was followed by a leisurely dinner and lots of chit-chat 🙂 . The whole atmosphere was very relaxing. Just what we needed after a bit of hard work earlier with the climbs at Sigiriya (Exploring Sigiriya).

Next morning Ram came to pick us up from the resort by 6:45am. We drove straight to his diving centre located on the beach at Dutch Bay. As we had decided the day before, we were going to do dolphin watching first. We had hoped to get to see Blue Whales. However Ram told us that the Blue Whale season was over and the last sighting was over 2 weeks earlier. So we had decided to give it a miss. So off we went to try and see dolphins. And see them we did. They were Spinner Dolphins. We also got to see a couple of them perform the spinning action. Here is a short video of the trip.

Back at the beach my daughter along with Prantik, my wife’s cousin, went for scuba diving. My son also joined for it during the second session. Here is a short video from their dives (courtesy my daughter).

The rest of the day was spent back at the resort just lazing around.

Of course we had to visit the beach to catch the sunrise the next morning. Here are some pictures from then:

Finally it was time to say goodbye to Anilana and Trincomalee. It had been a wonderful experience for all of us.

Recommendations

Trincomalee is a great place to visit especially for the water-based activities. If you are thinking of going scuba diving, Ram (Epic Ocean Adventures) is an excellent instructor to go with. He is very customer focused, safety oriented and a very experienced diver.

You will need to atleast two nights of stay. If you want to do more dives then of course it will have to be more. For Blue Whale watching Ram told us that it is best done between Feb and April. Well, a trip in the future for us I guess.