Pasikuda Bay is known for its perfect, waveless waters and Elephant Rock is ideal for some shoreline to chill on. While the beach around the strip seems to have narrowed down, Elephant Rock is still going strong.
Getting There
Once you get to Pasikuda Bay – which is a gruelling 9 hour train ride or 8-ish hour A/C bus ride from Colombo – don’t attempt to make it to Elephant Rock by yourself. You’ll likely get lost. It’s about 15 minutes from Hotel Street, off some repetitively winding, sometimes-abandoned, orange dirt paths, best attempted with a tuk driver arranged by the hotel you’re staying at.
There’s a lot of palmyrah and sky on the way there, and as you can see it was a Dorothy’s cyclone kind of day when we made the trip.
The Rock
Once you get to the location, you’ll have to meander through a lot of cacti – I had no idea this was a thing in Pasikuda – to get to the Elephant Rock.
The ‘elephant rock’ is basically this tiny rock on top of a huge orange one, shaped like a baby elephant when you look at it from the side. Pretty random. The space is basically a lovely private sandy space, with large rocks that form mini-caves underneath, and a great place to sit down and sift through washed up shells and corals.
The water can get rough by Pasikuda standards, but it’s probably chill if you visit on a sunny day. Pasikuda unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a lot of wide-shore options on the main hotel bay, so this place made a superb alternative when we were on the east coast. However, it can be pretty isolated, so best to take someone who knows the area with you.
Also heads up, there’s another clearing nearby, on the way to the Elephant Rock, that makes for an idyllic spot for watching the sunset.
