Trincomalee

Sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age and flooded a river valley here, and the result is a harbour with characteristics that are genuinely unusual: deep water immediately offshore, natural shelter on almost every side, multiple arms and inlets, and enough space to hold a great many ships at once. Harbours like this are rare, which is why a modest town on a quiet coast has a name recognised by anyone who has studied shipping. For a visitor the practical effects are simple and pleasant — the water off the town is calm and clear, the fishing fleet works from inside the inlet, and boats can put out in conditions that would keep them ashore elsewhere on this coast.

On the promontory guarding the harbour mouth, at the top of a cliff dropping straight into the sea, stands one of the most important Hindu temples in Sri Lanka. Koneswaram is a working temple of painted towers and open courtyards, with a gopuram visible from a distance, statues facing the water, and a constant traffic of worshippers rather than sightseers — the same conventions apply as at any kovil, with shoes and hats off and shoulders and knees covered. The setting is what makes it: you arrive along the cliff top with the whole harbour behind you and the open ocean below, and there is a point on the rock where the drop is sheer enough to be startling. Going at dusk, when the lamps come on and the sea goes dark, is the version worth planning for.

North of the town the coast opens into the long, pale, shallow beaches the east is known for, backed by casuarina and considerably calmer than the southern surf coasts. A short boat ride from Nilaveli lies a small protected island whose fringing reef is the most accessible good snorkelling in the country, with living coral, reef fish and a resident population of blacktip reef sharks that are harmless and startling in equal measure. Visitor numbers on the island are limited, and going early avoids both the crowd and the afternoon chop. Inland, a set of hot springs has been walled into a row of square wells where bathers draw water over themselves by bucket in the open air — an entirely local scene rather than a spa, and a good half-hour.

The district works on the opposite calendar to the south and west, with its good season running roughly from May to October — the opposite calendar to the south, and a direct consequence of the dual-monsoon system. It is meaningfully less developed than the south-west: fewer hotels, fewer restaurants, lower prices and much less traffic, with the trade-off that choice in every category is thinner and that getting here from the airport is a long day by road or an overnight train. Travellers who make the journey generally do so because they want the quieter half of the island rather than because it is convenient, and the district rewards exactly that intention. Whale watching runs in the same window as the beach season.