Wild Coast Tented Lodge Opens Beside Yala National Park
Resplendent Ceylon's safari camp opened in late 2017 on the shore next to Yala, with 28 cocoon-shaped tents and bamboo pavilions modelled on the park's boulders.
Wild Coast Tented Lodge opened in late 2017 at Palatupana, on the south-east coast of Sri Lanka. The camp stands where dry scrub forest meets a beach of dunes and rocks, on the edge of Yala National Park. It is the third property of Resplendent Ceylon, the hotel company of the family behind Dilmah tea, after Ceylon Tea Trails in the hill country and Cape Weligama on the south coast.
Boulders and cocoons
The design is by Nomadic Resorts, a studio that specialises in light structures for remote sites. The landscape of Yala is marked by large rounded outcrops of rock, and the architects took them as their model. The main buildings, which hold the restaurant, the bar and the library, are a cluster of domes that look like boulders from a distance. Each is a gridshell of woven bamboo, open at the sides and clad in shingles of reclaimed teak that are turning silver with age. They stand around a free-form pool beside the beach.
The guest accommodation consists of 28 tents, called Cocoons, with eight smaller Urchin tents for children placed next to the family units. Each Cocoon is an arched structure under a taut membrane, with a four-poster bed, a copper bathtub, leather and brass fittings in the style of a colonial expedition, and air-conditioning. Some have their own plunge pools. The tents are arranged in groups around watering holes that draw animals from the park, and their plan, seen from above, forms the print of a leopard’s paw.
The camp is not fenced. Wild boar, deer and occasionally elephants walk through, and guests are escorted to their tents after dark.
Yala
Yala is Sri Lanka’s best-known national park and has one of the highest densities of leopards in the world. It also has elephants, sloth bears, crocodiles and more than 200 species of birds. The rate includes game drives with the lodge’s own rangers at dawn and in the late afternoon, which matters in a park where the main gate can be crowded with vehicles. The lodge uses a quieter entrance and its guides are trained naturalists.
Practicalities
The lodge is about five hours by road from Colombo, or a short flight by seaplane or helicopter to a nearby lake and airstrip. The dry season, from February to July, gives the best wildlife viewing as animals gather at water. The park usually closes for some weeks around September. The sea here is too rough for swimming.
The property is a member of Relais & Châteaux. Combined with a tea bungalow in the hills and a few days on the south coast, it makes up the classic circuit of the island.
